President Joe Biden introduced on Monday that he’s commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal loss of life row, changing their punishments to life imprisonment simply weeks earlier than President-elect Donald Trump, an outspoken proponent of increasing capital punishment, takes workplace.
The transfer spares the lives of individuals convicted in killings, together with the slayings of police and army officers, individuals on federal land and people concerned in lethal financial institution robberies or drug offers, in addition to the killings of guards or prisoners in federal services.
It means simply three federal inmates are nonetheless dealing with execution. They’re Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of 9 Black members of Mom Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 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 antisemitic assault in U.S historical past.
“I’ve dedicated my career to reducing violent crime and ensuring a fair and effective justice system,” Biden stated in a press release. “Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”
The Biden administration in 2021 introduced a moratorium on federal capital punishment to check the protocols used, which suspended executions throughout Biden’s time period. However Biden truly had promised to go additional on the problem up to now, pledging to finish federal executions with out the caveats for terrorism and hate-motivated, mass killings.
Whereas working for president in 2020, Biden’s marketing campaign web site stated he would “work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example.”
Comparable language did not seem on Biden’s reelection web site earlier than he left the presidential race in July.
“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden’s assertion stated. “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 stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”
He took a political jab at Trump, saying, “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
Trump, who takes workplace on Jan. 20, has spoken often of increasing executions. In a speech asserting his 2024 marketing campaign, Trump known as for these “caught selling drugs to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.” He later promised to execute drug and human smugglers and even praised China’s harsher remedy of drug peddlers. Throughout his first time period as president, Trump additionally advocated for the loss of life penalty for drug sellers.
There have been 13 federal executions throughout Trump’s first time period, greater than underneath any president in trendy historical past, and a few could have occurred quick sufficient to have contributed to the unfold of the coronavirus on the federal loss of life row facility in Indiana.
These had been the primary federal executions since 2003. The ultimate three occurred after Election Day in November 2020 however earlier than Trump left workplace the next January, the primary time federal prisoners had been put to loss of life by a lame-duck president since Grover Cleveland in 1889.
Biden confronted latest strain from advocacy teams urging him to behave to make it tougher for Trump to extend using capital punishment for federal inmates. The president’s announcement additionally comes lower than two weeks after he commuted the sentences of roughly 1,500 individuals who had been launched from jail and positioned on dwelling confinement in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, and of 39 others convicted of nonviolent crimes, the biggest single-day act of clemency in trendy historical past.
The announcement additionally adopted the post-election pardon that Biden granted his son Hunter on federal gun and tax expenses after lengthy saying he wouldn’t problem one, sparking an uproar in Washington. The pardon additionally raised questions on whether or not he would problem sweeping preemptive pardons for administration officers and different allies who the White Home worries may very well be unjustly focused by Trump’s second administration.
Hypothesis that Biden might commute federal loss of life sentences intensified final week after the White Home introduced he plans to go to Italy on the ultimate overseas journey of his presidency subsequent month. Biden, a working towards Catholic, will meet with Pope Francis, who lately known as for prayers for U.S. loss of life row inmates in hopes their sentences will likely be commuted.
Martin Luther King III, who publicly urged Biden to vary the loss of life sentences, stated in a press release issued by the White Home that the president “has completed what no president earlier than him was keen to do: take significant and lasting motion not simply to acknowledge the loss of life penalty’s racist roots but in addition to treatment its persistent unfairness.”
Donnie Oliverio, a retired Ohio police officer whose companion was killed by one of many males whose loss of life sentence was transformed, stated the execution of “the person who killed my police partner and best friend would have brought me no peace.”
“The president has done what is right here,” Oliverio stated in a press release additionally issued by the White Home, “and what is consistent with the faith he and I share.”
