Biden gives life to 37 of 40 federal death row inmates so Trump can’t execute them
President Joe Biden announced Monday that he is commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, weeks before President-elect Donald Trump, a vocal supporter of capital punishment expansion, takes office, commuting their sentences to life. Are turning into imprisonment.
The move protects the lives of people convicted of murders, including the killings of police and military officers, people on federal lands and those involved in deadly bank robberies or drug deals, as well as the killings of guards or prisoners in federal facilities.
This means only three federal prisoners still face execution. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the racist murders of nine black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history.
“I have dedicated my career to reducing violent crime and ensuring a fair and effective justice system,” Biden said in a statement. “Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life in prison without the possibility of parole. These commutations of a moratorium on federal executions imposed by my Administration, in cases other than terrorism and hate crimes, Are consistent with – mass motivated murder.”
In 2021, the Biden administration announced a moratorium on the federal death penalty to study the protocols used, leading to a suspension of executions during Biden’s tenure. But Biden has actually promised to move forward on the issue in the past, promising to end federal executions without warning for mass killings motivated by terrorism and hate.
When running for president in 2020, Biden’s campaign website said he would “work to pass legislation to abolish the death penalty at the federal level, and encourage states to follow the federal government’s example. “
Such language did not appear on Biden’s re-election website before he left the presidential race in July.
Biden’s statement read, “Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and express my grief for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss.” ” “But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, Vice Chairman and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”
He took a political jab at Trump, saying, “In good conscience, I cannot step back and let the new administration resume actions that I had stopped.”
Trump, who took office on January 20, has often talked about increasing the death penalty. In a speech announcing his 2024 campaign, Trump called for “the death penalty for people caught selling drugs for their heinous acts.” He later promised to hang drug and human traffickers and also praised China’s harsh treatment of drug smugglers. During his first term as president, Trump also advocated the death penalty for drug dealers.
There were 13 federal executions during Trump’s first term, more than any president in modern history, and some may have occurred so rapidly as to contribute to the spread of the coronavirus at the federal death penalty facility in Indiana.
They were the first federal executions since 2003. The last three occurred after Election Day in November 2020, but before Trump left office the following January, marking the first time federal inmates were executed by a lame-duck president since Grover Cleveland in 1889.
Biden faced recent pressure from advocacy groups urging him to take action to make it more difficult for Trump to increase the use of the death penalty for federal prisoners. The president’s announcement also comes less than two weeks after he commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people who had been released from prison and placed under home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic. He was arrested, and 39 other people were convicted of non-violent crimes, the largest single-day action. Of pardon in modern history.
The announcement also follows a post-election pardon in which Biden granted his son Hunter a pardon on federal gun and tax charges, after long saying he would not issue one, causing an uproar in Washington. Went. The pardon also raised questions about whether he would issue broad advance pardons for administration officials and other associates whom the White House worries could be improperly targeted by Trump’s second administration.
Speculation that Biden might commute the federal death penalty intensified last week, when the White House announced he planned to visit Italy next month on the final foreign trip of his presidency. Biden, who practices Catholicism, will meet with Pope Francis, who recently called for prayers for US death row inmates in hopes their sentences will be commuted.
Martin Luther King III, who had publicly urged Biden to commute the death penalty, said in a statement released by the White House that the president “has done what no president before him has been willing to do: only Not to accept but to take meaningful and lasting action.” “The racist roots of the death penalty but also the solution to its continuing unfairness.”
Donnie Oliverio, a retired Ohio police officer whose partner was killed by one of the men whose death sentence was commuted, said, “The guy who killed my police partner and best friend should I will not get any peace by hanging myself.”
“The President has done what is right and what he and I believe in,” Oliverio said in a statement released by the White House.