President Joe Biden announced Monday that he will commute 37 people from federal death row to life in prison — a decision that leaves just three federal inmates on death row when President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month.
“Today I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row to life without parole,” Biden said in a statement released Monday. CNN.
He just did not commute the sentences of three people whose crimes involved mass murder or acts of terrorism: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the two brothers responsible for the deadly 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; Dylann Roof, the white nationalist who massacred nine people in a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 congregants at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.
“These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases not related to terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,” Biden said, referring to a moratorium on executions put in place by his Justice Department.
Most of the 37 people whose sentences were commuted Monday were convicted of lesser-known crimes, such as drug-trafficking-related murders or killings of prison guards or other inmates.
“Make no mistake: I condemn these killers, I grieve for the victims of their heinous acts, and I feel pain for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in his statement. “But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice president and now president, I am more convinced than ever that we must end the use of the death penalty at the federal level. I cannot in good conscience stand down and allow the new administration to continue the executions that I stopped.”
The decision comes as death penalty opponents prepare for Trump’s return to the White House. During the 2024 campaign, Trump signaled he would restart federal executions and work to expand the list of crimes punishable by death under federal law, which normally provides for the death penalty for murder, espionage and treason.
Biden’s announcement also comes after he pardoned his son Hunter Biden this month on federal tax and gun charges, and the White House also announced further decisions on pardons and commutations. President Biden also pardoned about 1,500 people this month in the largest single-day pardon in modern history.
Opponents of the death penalty and key Biden allies, such as Sen. Chris Coons, have urged the president to consider commuting the death penalty at the federal level.
“President Biden has an opportunity to make history by addressing the racist and unjust federal death penalty system and fulfilling his promise to the American people,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, after the ACLU and more than 130 other human rights organizations sent a letter to Biden urging him to commute the sentences of those on death row.
Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, told CNN on Sunday that Biden should consider commutations “on a case-by-case basis.”
“There are real questions about the fairness and the death penalty process in the United States. And I don’t know what President Biden will end up doing, but I think there are reasons — both in terms of racial justice, the process, and what it says domestically and to the world about our values, if we were to go ahead and execute all these individuals, instead of to put them in prison for the rest of their lives,” Coons said on “State of the Union.”
During the 2020 campaign, Biden promised to abolish the federal death penalty, and early in his term he imposed a moratorium on federal executions while the Justice Department reviewed the practice. Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, did not seek the death penalty in the new cases, although the Justice Department continued to support the death penalty for some federal defendants, including Tsarnaev and Roof.
Outside of the federal system, there are more than 2,000 people in the United States who have been convicted in state courts and put on death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Biden does not have the authority to stop those executions.
Opponents fear Trump’s return to the White House could mean a new round of federal executions, echoing the final months of the president’s first administration. Thirteen people were executed in the last seven months of Trump’s first term after then-Justice Secretary Bill Barr revived the practice after a 17-year hiatus.
Trump has expressed support for imposing the death penalty on convicted traffickers and drug dealers, while also saying he would push for prosecutors to seek the death penalty for migrants who kill American citizens or anyone who kills a police officer.
While the Justice Department under Trump could continue to seek death sentences in future cases, it cannot reverse any commutations issued by Biden.
(Vijesti.ba)
