CNN
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President Joe Biden announced Monday that 37 federal death row inmates will serve life sentences in prison. The decision leaves only three federal prisoners awaiting execution when President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month.
“Today, we will commute the sentences of 37 of the 40 inmates on federal death row to life in prison without the possibility of parole,” Biden announced in a statement Monday.
It is noteworthy that the president did not commute the sentences of the three men who committed crimes such as mass shootings and terrorism. Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who massacred nine people at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015. and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 worshipers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.
“These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my administration has placed on federal executions, except in cases of mass murder motivated by terrorism or hatred,” Biden said, referring to the Justice Department’s moratorium on federal executions. “I will.”
Most of the 37 people whose sentences were commuted Monday were convicted of lesser-profile crimes, including murders related to drug trafficking and the killings of correctional officers and other inmates.
“Make no mistake about it, I condemn these murderers, I mourn the victims of their despicable acts, and my heart goes out to all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in a statement. ” he said. “But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice president, and now president, I have always believed that the use of the death penalty must end at the federal level. I am convinced that in good conscience I cannot stand back and allow the new administration to resume the executions that I have halted.”
The move comes as opponents of the death penalty prepare for President Trump’s return to the White House. During the 2024 campaign, President Trump said he would restart federal sentences and expand the crimes eligible for the death penalty under federal law, which generally allows capital punishment for murder, espionage, and treason.
Biden’s announcement comes after he pardoned his son Hunter Biden this month, who was convicted of federal tax and gun possession charges, and the White House expects to announce further pardons and commutations. It states that President Biden pardoned about 1,500 people this month in the largest one-day clemency act in modern history.
Opponents of the death penalty and prominent Biden allies, including Sen. Chris Coons, had encouraged the president to consider commuting the federal death penalty.
“President Biden has an opportunity to make history by addressing the racist and unjust federal death penalty system and keeping the promises he made to the American people early in his campaign,” Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement this month. ” The ACLU and more than 130 other civil rights and human rights organizations sent a letter to Biden urging him to commute the sentences of death row inmates.
Coons, a Delaware Democrat, told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday that Biden should consider cuts on a “case-by-case basis.”
“There are some real questions about the fairness and process of the death penalty in the United States. We don’t know what President Biden will ultimately do, but if we were to implement I think there are reasons for these, both in terms of justice, due process, and what it says about our values domestically and to the world, rather than having them spend the rest of their lives in prison. I want all of our people to be saved,” Coons said on “State of the Union.”
Biden campaigned for an end to the federal death penalty in 2020, and early in his presidency he imposed a moratorium on federal executions while the Justice Department reviewed them. Mr. Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, is not seeking the death penalty in any new cases, but the Justice Department continues to support death sentences for some federal defendants, including Mr. Tsarnaev and Mr. Roof.
Outside of the federal system, there are more than 2,000 people in the United States who were convicted in state courts and sentenced to death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Biden has no power to block the death sentence.
Opponents fear that Trump’s return to the White House could mirror the final months of the president-elect’s first administration and herald a new round of federal executions. Thirteen people were executed in the final seven months of President Trump’s first term, after then-Attorney General Bill Barr reinstated executions after a 17-year hiatus.
President Trump has expressed support for imposing the death penalty on convicted human traffickers and drug traffickers, while also calling for prosecutors to impose penalties on immigrants who kill American citizens and those who kill law enforcement officers. He said he would aim to have the death penalty pursued.
The Justice Department under the Trump administration may resume seeking the death penalty in future cases, but it cannot reverse Biden’s commutation.
CNN’s Dakin Andone contributed to this report.
