Biden commutes 37 death sentences ahead of Trump’s plan to resume federal executions

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of nearly all prisoners on federal death row, sparing the lives of 37 men just a month before Donald Trump will return to the Oval Office with a promise to restart federal executions.

Those affected by Biden’s action, all of whom were convicted of murder, will serve life imprisonment without the possibility of parole instead of facing execution. Only three men, who each carried out notorious mass killings, will remain on federal death row.

The president campaigned in 2020 on ending the federal death penalty. Although proposed legislation to that effect failed to advance in Congress during his administration, Biden directed the Justice Department to issue a moratorium on federal executions. Thirteen prisoners on federal death row were put to death during Trump’s first term.

“I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” Biden said in a statement Monday. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

Biden said the commutations were consistent with the standard he has imposed for halting executions “in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”

“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said.

The White House released statements of support from faith leaders, civil rights groups and law enforcement officials, as well as from friends and family members of those killed by men on death row.

“Putting to death the person who killed my police partner and best friend would have brought me no peace,” said Donnie Oliverio, a retired police officer, who alluded to Biden’s being Catholic. “The president has done what is right here, and what is consistent with the faith he and I share.” His partner, Bryan S. Hurst, was shot and killed while on duty by Daryl Lawrence during an attempted bank robbery in Columbus, Ohio. Lawrence was sentenced to death in 2006.

Of the 37 men whose sentences were commuted, 15 are white, 15 are Black, six are Latino and one is Asian. They were sentenced in 16 states, including three that have abolished the death penalty. Nine are on death row because they were convicted of killing fellow federal prisoners.

The three men who can still face federal execution are Robert D. Bowers, 52, who in 2018 gunned down 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh; Dylann Roof, 30, the white supremacist who in 2015 opened fire on Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine people; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 31, one of the two brothers who carried out the bombing of the Boston Marathon in 2013 that killed three and maimed more than a dozen others.

A number of groups had called on the president to commute the sentences of the men on death row, including members of his party and several civil rights organizations. Biden also had a phone call with Pope Francis last week, who prayed this month that federal inmates facing execution would have their sentences commuted. In an article about the call, the Vatican’s news agency reported that the pope had “concern for those on death row.” Catholic Bishops in the United States had also called for the death sentences to be commuted.

Trump supports the death penalty, and during his 2024 presidential campaign he called for an expansion, suggesting that “drug dealers and human traffickers” and child sex abusers should be put to death. During his first term, Trump restarted federal executions after a nearly 20-year pause; all 13 were carried out in the final six months of his administration. He has not said how he will expand the death penalty to new federal crimes.

Biden did not repeat his pledge to end the federal death penalty during his most recent campaign. But as president, he directed the Justice Department to issue a moratorium on federal executions. Federal prosecutors were also told not to seek capital punishment, but the Biden administration reversed course in January, when the Justice Department announced that it would for the first time seek the death penalty in a federal case against the gunman who in 2022 killed 10 Black people in a racist, hate-motivated shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. The man, Payton Gendron, has already been sentenced to life in prison on state charges.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, since 1973 at least 200 people in the United States who were convicted and sentenced to death have been exonerated. Often, appealing to the president is the last action that can spare a prisoner’s life. But the president’s powers of clemency are limited to those who committed federal offenses, a small fraction of the people sentenced to death in the United States.

Presidents typically order a round of pardons toward the end of their time in office, and Biden has faced pressure from Democrats to use those powers more sweepingly while he can. Monday’s act of clemency comes after Biden this month issued 1,500 commutations for those who have been in home confinement since the coronavirus pandemic, a record number for a single day. Biden has already issued blanket pardons, including for thousands of people convicted of federal possession of marijuana and veterans convicted of engaging in gay sex while serving in the military. None of those people were still in prison when they were pardoned.

Democrats are still pushing Biden in his final days to issue more acts of forgiveness for those behind bars under outdated laws that contributed to disparities in drug sentencing and the mass incarceration of Black Americans. More than 60 Democrats, including close allies, signed a letter last month urging him to help the thousands of people whose sentences would be reduced if some of the provisions in Trump’s First Step Act were applied retroactively.

The president has also faced pressure to help those imprisoned for crimes associated with crack cocaine who would be free if the drug had been powder cocaine. As a senator, Biden worked on the 1986 legislation that imposed those sentencing disparities. He has since expressed regret for his role.

Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., said in an interview this month that choosing not to take action on clemency would pose a political risk for Democrats.

“The Democrats on more than one occasion have tried to make the case that we’re the adults in the room, but the American people don’t always think we’re the fighters in the room,” Pressley said. “And that’s often because we have the power but don’t use it. Scared power is no power at all. And President Biden has the power.”

This month, Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon of his son Hunter Biden after repeatedly insisting he would not do so, a decision that was broadly criticized by the president’s political adversaries as well as many in his party.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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