WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden announced on Monday that he will commute the sentences of 37 out of the 40 individuals on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump, an outspoken advocate for the expansion of the death penalty, takes office.
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The measure pardons the lives of individuals convicted of homicides, including the murders of police officers and military personnel, of individuals located in federal territory, those involved in deadly bank robberies or deals with drug traffickers, as well as homicides of guards or inmates in federal facilities.
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Why did Biden decide to spare these people's lives?
"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 out of the 40 people on federal death row to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium that my administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murders."
In 2021, the Biden administration announced a moratorium on federal capital punishment to study the protocols used, which suspended executions during this term.
But Biden had actually promised to go further on the issue in the past, committing to end federal executions without exceptions for terrorism and hate-motivated mass murders.
Biden launched a political blow to Trump, saying: "In good conscience, I cannot stand idly by and allow a new government to resume the executions that I stopped."
In fact, Trump, who takes office on January 20, has frequently spoken about expanding executions. In a speech announcing his 2024 campaign, Trump called for those "caught selling drugs to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts." He later promised to execute drug and human traffickers, and even praised China's harsher treatment of drug dealers.
There were 13 federal executions during Trump's first term, more than under any president in modern history, and some may have occurred quickly enough to have contributed to the spread of the coronavirus in the federal death row facility in Indiana.
Those were the first federal executions since 2003. The last three occurred after Election Day in November 2020 but before Trump left office in the following January, the first time federal prisoners were executed by an outgoing president since Grover Cleveland in 1889.
Which are the people who support the death penalty?
This means that only three federal inmates still face execution.
- Dylann Roof: carried out the racist 2015 murders of nine black members of the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
- Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: the Boston Marathon bomber of 2013.
- Robert Bowers: fatally shot 11 congregants at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in the history of the United States.