Biden commutes most federal death sentences to life in prison before Trump takes office

CNN
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President Joe Biden announced Monday that he is removing 37 people from federal death row to serve life sentences behind bars — a decision that leaves just three federal prisoners awaiting execution when President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month.

“Today I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row to life without the possibility of parole,” Biden announced in a statement released Monday.

Notably, the president did not commute the sentences of three people whose crimes included mass shootings or acts of terrorism: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of two brothers responsible for the deadly 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; Dylann Roof, a white nationalist who massacred nine people in 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 imposed on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,” Biden said, referring to his Justice Department’s freeze on federal executions.

The majority of the 37 people whose sentences were commuted on Monday were convicted of less high-profile offences, such as murder linked to drug trafficking or the killing of prison guards or other prisoners.

“Make no mistake: I condemn these killers, grieve for the victims of their despicable actions, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in his statement. “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 end the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I stopped.”

The move comes as death penalty opponents prepare for Trump’s return to the White House. During the 2024 campaign, Trump indicated that he would restart federal executions and work to expand the pool of crimes eligible for the death penalty under federal law, which generally allows the death penalty for murder, espionage and treason.

Biden’s announcement also comes after he pardoned his son Hunter Biden this month on federal tax and gun convictions, and as the White House said additional clemency and commutation announcements were on the way. Also this month, President Biden pardoned about 1,500 people in the largest single-day clemency in modern history.

Opponents of the death penalty and top Biden allies such as Sen. Chris Coons had urged the president to consider commuting federal death sentences.

“President Biden has an opportunity to make history by addressing the racist and unjust federal death penalty system and keeping an early campaign promise he made to the American people,” Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said this month after that the ACLU and more than 130 other civil and human rights organizations sent Biden a letter calls on him to reverse the sentences of those condemned to death.

Coons, a Delaware Democrat, told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday that Biden should consider the commutes on a case-by-case basis.

“There are some real questions about the justice and the process of capital punishment in the United States. And I don’t know what President Biden will ultimately do, but I think there are reasons — both in terms of racial justice, due process, and what it says domestically and to the world about our values ​​if we were to go ahead and execute all of these individuals instead of having them spend the rest of their lives in prison,” Coons said on “State of the Union.”

Biden campaigned in 2020 to abolish the federal death penalty and early in his presidency imposed a moratorium on federal executions while the Justice Department reviewed the practice. Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, has not sought the death penalty in any new cases, although the Justice Department continued to support death sentences for some federal defendants, including Tsarnaev and Roof.

Outside the federal system, there are over 2,000 people in the United States who were convicted in state courts and put on death row, according to Death Penalty Information Center. Biden has no power to stop these death sentences.

Opponents fear Trump’s return to the White House will herald a new round of federal executions in an echo of the final months of the president-elect’s first administration. Thirteen people were executed in the last seven months of Trump’s first term after then-Attorney General Bill Barr revived the practice from a 17-year hiatus.

Trump has expressed support for imposing the death penalty on convicted criminals human traffickers and drug dealerswhile also saying he would seek to have prosecutors pursue the death penalty for migrants who kill US citizens or anyone who kills a law enforcement officer.

While the Justice Department under Trump could resume seeking the death penalty in future cases, it cannot reverse any commutation issued by Biden.

CNN’s Dakin Andone contributed to this report.