WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced Monday that he will commute the death sentences of 37 inmates, leaving just three people on death row in federal prisons.
The commuted sentences will be commuted to life sentences without the possibility of parole, according to the White House.
“These commutations are consistent with my administration’s moratorium on federal executions other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass killings,” Biden said in a statement. “Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, mourn the victims of their despicable actions, and mourn all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable losses.
“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.” Biden added this in his statement. “I cannot in good conscience sit back and let a new government resume the executions I stopped.”
The three men still on federal death row are Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people in the 2018 shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh; Dylann Roof, who killed nine people in a 2015 shooting at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombers.
As a presidential candidate, Biden argued in 2019 that “we should abolish the death penalty.”
In 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a moratorium on federal executions. No federal prisoners have been executed during Biden’s presidency.
However, the Justice Department said this year it would seek the death penalty for the white supremacist who killed 10 Black people in a supermarket shooting in Buffalo, New York, in 2022.
In addition to federal death sentences, about half of the states allow the death penalty. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, more than 20 people have been executed this year. About 2,200 people are on death row nationwide.
One of the inmates whose sentence Biden will commute, Billie Allen, has maintained his innocence.
“I want to believe he’s going to do the right thing,” Allen said of Biden in an interview last month, adding, “As someone who is innocent, he should do the right thing sooner rather than later.”
Allen said he felt his hopes were “cut off” when Donald Trump won the presidential election last month. He wrote his last will, explaining that he had to “prepare for the worst.”
Around the time of Trump’s election, some prison staff taunted inmates at the prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, according to a death row inmate and two federal defenders. According to the same sources, execution rehearsals have also increased at the prison, where nearly all federal death row inmates are held, ahead of Trump’s inauguration.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump said during his campaign that he would push the Justice Department to seek the death penalty for drug dealers.
“We are going to ask that anyone who sells drugs and is caught receive the death penalty for their heinous actions,” Trump said as he launched his 2024 campaign.
He has also called for the death penalty for “any migrant who kills a U.S. citizen or law enforcement officer.”
Thirteen federal prisoners were put to death during Trump’s first term — all in the last six months he was in office. Before that, the most recent federal execution was in 2003.
Kelley Henry is a federal defender for Rejon Taylor, one of the inmates removed from death row by Biden’s action. Henry previously represented Lisa Montgomery, who was executed in the final days of the first Trump administration. She said the rapid pace of federal executions at the end of the Trump administration was “brutal.”
“It was like the justice system was suspended, that’s the best way I can put it,” she said in an interview last month.
Karoline Leavitt, spokesperson for the Trump transition, asked for comment on the use of the death penalty at the end of Trump’s last term and his plans for his next term. He said he will keep his campaign promises.
“President Trump meant what he said during the campaign: He will enforce the death penalty for drug dealers who knowingly sell deadly poison to their fellow Americans, and illegal immigrant criminals who murder innocent American citizens,” she said in a statement. “He will deliver on these promises.”
Trump would need congressional support to expand the types of crimes for which prosecutors can seek the death penalty, and any changes would likely face legal challenges.
Biden this month commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 non-violent offenders and pardoned another 39 people. In a statement, Biden said that “America was built on the promise of opportunity and second chances.”
Biden also pardoned his son Hunter Biden, who was about to be sentenced on a federal conviction on gun charges, as well as a separate case in which he pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges. The president had previously said he would not pardon his son.
NBC News has reported that Biden is considering issuing preemptive pardons to people he believes Trump could legally target during his second administration.
Megan Lebowitz and Sarah Dean reported from Washington and Abigail Brooks from New York City.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
