Just before Christmas, President Biden announced commutation of sentences for 37 out of 40 individuals on federal death row, changing their punishments to life in prison.
President Biden’s administration announced it would commute the sentences of most inmates on death row. Biden has long been publicly opposed to the death penalty and has previously mentioned his plan to commute many of the stalled sentences currently on death row. There were 40 current federal inmates awaiting execution as of this month, and the new act commuted the sentences of 37. It also extended a prior moratorium on executions that Biden imposed earlier this year, which broke his campaign promise to abolish the death penalty at the federal level.
The three inmates with unchanged sentences were deemed by the President to have “hate-motivated” actions, such as mass murder or terrorism. In a statement released by his administration, President Biden condemned “these murderers” and “grieved for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss.” Biden added that he was “more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”
While some from his party applauded the president for taking action on this issue with less than a month remaining until Donald Trump’s inauguration, many also criticized the convicted criminals commuted sentences were people guilty of heinous attacks on police officers and military personnel. According to the Associated Press, the mother of one victim whose killer will now no longer face the death penalty, called President Biden’s actions a “clear gross abuse of power” on Facebook, and added that Biden made all the hours spent in court “just a waste of time.” She went on to say“at no point did the president consider the victims. He, and his supporters, have blood on their hands.”
Those whose sentences were not commuted were Dylann Roof, who was convicted of the racially-motivated killing of nine Black members of a church in Charleston, South Carolina; Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the perpetrator of the fatal bombing at the 2013 Boston Marathon, and Robert Bowers, who recently was convicted of killing 11 members of the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh – which was the deadliest antisemitic attack in US history. Supporters applauded the president for not commuting the sentences of those whose actions were terrorism or hate-motivated.
