In one of his last acts before leaving the White House, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 federal prisoners on death row to life sentences.
US President Joe Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 federal prisoners sentenced to death, converting them to life in prison without parole before handing over power to Donald Trump on January 20.
Biden's move will thwart Trump's plan to resume a rapid pace of executions. Unlike executive orders, clemency decisions cannot be overturned by a president's successor, although the death penalty can be sought more aggressively in future cases.
Trump restarted federal executions after a nearly 20-year pause during his first term, from 2017 to 2021.
The measure spares the lives of people convicted of homicides, including the murders of police and military personnel, of people who are in federal territory and of those involved in deadly bank robberies or dealings with drug traffickers, as well as the murders of guards or prisoners in federal facilities.
This means only three federal inmates still face execution. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist murders of nine black members of Mother 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 anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history.
Biden, who ran for president opposing the death penalty, put federal executions on hold when he took office in January 2021.
In recent weeks, he faced pressure from congressional Democrats, death penalty opponents and religious leaders like Pope Francis to commute federal death sentences before he leaves.
“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, I grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and I grieve for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable losses,” Biden said in a statement.
“However, guided by my conscience and my experience (…) I am more convinced than ever that we must end the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” he added. “I cannot in good conscience stand by and let a new administration resume the executions that I stopped.”
Earlier in the month, Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and pardoned 39 others convicted of nonviolent crimes. He also granted full and unconditional pardon to his son Hunter, after repeatedly insisting that he would not.
Monday's decision does not apply to cases of terrorism or hate-motivated mass killings.
It leaves out three of the most well-known men on federal death row: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted for his involvement in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; Dylann Roof, convicted of the shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and, Robert Bowers, convicted of the mass shooting at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue in 2018.
(With information from Reuters and The Associated Press)