Joe Biden has commuted the sentences of 37 of 40 federal death row inmates to life in prison without parole.
The decision follows mounting pressure from campaigners who warned that President-elect Donald Trump supports the death penalty and restarted federal executions during his first term after a 17-year hiatus.
“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, mourn the victims of their despicable actions, and grieve for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable losses,” Biden said in a statement released Monday.
“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 sit back and let a new government resume the executions I stopped.”
Related: After Biden pardoned his son, advocates are calling on him to grant clemency to others
It is the highest number of death sentences ever commuted by a president. Among those spared is Len Davis, a former New Orleans police officer who masterminded a drug protection ring involving several other officers and arranged the murder of a woman, Kim Groves, who filed a cruelty complaint against him.
Davis also helped send three men to prison for more than 28 years before they were found wrongly convicted of murder and released in 2022.
During a brief interview Monday, Groves’ son Corey praised Biden’s commutation of Davis’ death sentence and said he always wanted the former officer to live in prison as long as possible. “I would like Len to wake up on his 95th birthday and still be looking at concrete and barbed wire,” said Groves, who along with other family members received a $1.5 million settlement from the New Orleans city government in 2018 over the murder of his mother. . “I think that’s worse than any death sentence, so I don’t have any problem with what the president has done.”
There is also a commutation for Norris Holder, who was sentenced to death for a two-man bank robbery in which a security guard was killed. Prosecutors said Holder may not have fired the fatal shot.
Another beneficiary is Daryl Lawrence, sentenced to death for the murder of police officer Bryan Hurst in Columbus, Ohio. Hurst’s former police partner Donnie Oliverio said in a statement: “Putting to death the person who killed my police partner and best friend would not have brought me peace. The President has done what is right here, and what is consistent with the faith he and I share.”
The clemency action applies to all federal death row inmates, with the exception of three convicted of terrorism or hate-motivated mass murder: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of carrying out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; Dylann Roof, who shot and killed nine black church members in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who in 2018 stormed a synagogue in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community and killed 11 worshipers.
The majority of the 40 men on federal death row are people of color, and 38% are black, Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, previously told the Guardian. Nearly one in four men was 21 years or younger at the time of the crime.
Bryan Stevenson, the founder and executive director of the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative, said: “Today marks an important turning point in ending America’s tragic and error-prone use of the death penalty. By commuting nearly all federal death sentences, President Biden has sent a strong message to Americans that the death penalty is not the answer to our nation’s public safety concerns.”
Martin Luther King III, the son of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., added: “This is a historic day. By commuting these sentences, President Biden has done what no president before him was willing to do: take meaningful and lasting action not only to recognize the racist roots of the death penalty, but also to remedy its persistent unfairness.”
Biden’s journey on this issue has been complicated. As a senator, he championed a 1994 crime bill that expanded the federal death penalty to 60 new crimes. He boasted: “I am the man who put these death sentences in this bill.” The legislation is now widely believed to have contributed to mass incarceration, especially among black men, and many of those currently on death row have been convicted under its provisions.
But during his 2020 presidential election campaign, Biden reversed his long-held support for the death penalty and vowed to abolish it at the federal level. He raised concerns about wrongful convictions and racial disparities in the justice system.
The Biden administration has rightly placed a moratorium on federal executions. Calls on the President to commute federal death sentences in recent weeks. He received letters from corrections officials, business leaders, black pastors, Catholics, civil and human rights advocates, prosecutors, former judges, family members of victims and others. Pope Francis publicly offered a prayer for those on federal death row, urging Biden to show them mercy.
The White House said Biden’s latest action would prevent the next administration from carrying out execution sentences that would not be handed down under current policy and practice.
More people incarcerated in the federal system were put to death under Trump than under the previous 10 presidents combined. The Republican administration ended a 17-year hiatus when it executed Daniel Lewis Lee, then followed up with six more executions between July 16 and September 24, 2020.
Two Democrats who supported bicameral legislation to ban the use of the death penalty at the federal level welcomed Monday’s announcement.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said: “I have long advocated for the abolition of the federal death penalty and commend President Biden for this act of justice and mercy and for his leadership.”
Massachusetts Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley praised Biden’s move as a “historic and groundbreaking act of compassion that will save lives, address the deep racial disparities in our criminal justice system and send a powerful message about redemption, decency and humanity.”
According to the White House, Biden has issued more commutations at this point in his presidency than any of his recent predecessors at the same point in their first terms. Earlier this month, he announced clemency for about 1,500 Americans — the most ever in a single day — who have demonstrated successful rehabilitation and work to make communities safer.
Biden is also the first president to grant categorical pardons to individuals convicted of simple use and possession of marijuana, and to former LGBTQ+ service members convicted of private conduct based on their sexual orientation.
Earlier this month, the president sparked political outrage by pardoning his son Hunter for federal felony gun and tax convictions that could have led to a prison sentence. Biden, who will leave office on January 20, had repeatedly promised not to grant such a pardon.
Additional reporting by Oliver Laughland, Sam Levin and Ramon Antonio Vargas
