BOSTON – President Joe Biden announced Monday that he is translating the sentences of 37 of the 40 federal prisoners on death row. The list of convicted murderers granted clemency by the president does not include surviving Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
In addition to Tsarnaev, Biden also chose not to spare Dylann Roof, who killed nine black churchgoers in a racist attack in Charlestown, South Carolina, in 2015, or Robert Bowers, the gunman in the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue shooting that killed eleven people died.
Biden commuted the sentences for everyone else on federal death row to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“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.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s death sentence
More than a decade after the Boston Marathon bombings, Tsarnaev’s death sentence remains in the air. In March, a federal appeals court ordered an investigation into whether two jurors should have been disqualified because of bias. The court said a new trial in the penalty phase may be necessary to determine whether 31-year-old Tsarnaev should still be sentenced to death.
The 2013 bombings near the finish killed three people and injured more than 200. Tsarnaev was also convicted of the murder of MIT police officer Sean Collier during the subsequent manhunt.
In an effort to avoid a death penalty, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s lawyers claimed he fell under the influence of his older brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed during a Watertown shootout with police.
Pressley praises Biden
Earlier this month, Biden commuted about 1,500 prison sentences and pardoned 39 Americans convicted of nonviolent crimes. Rep. Ayanna Pressley was among those urging Biden to use his clemency powers before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
“There is no action more powerful or just than sparing someone’s life, and today President Biden is doing just that,” Pressley said in a statement. “The death penalty is a racist, flawed and fundamentally unjust punishment that has no place in any society.”
