There were hints that it was coming, but in a stunning move early Monday morning, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 prisoners on federal death row. There has been a moratorium on carrying out federal executions since 2021, and Biden’s move is seen as an attempt to prevent the incoming Trump administration from carrying out the executions.
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President Biden is commuting the sentences of nearly all the inmates on federal death row, a move that comes not even two weeks after he went through with the “largest single-day grant of clemency” in American history, the White House announced Monday.
Of the 40 inmates on federal death row, according to DeathPenaltyInfo.org, Biden is commuting 37 men sentenced to death, reclassifying their sentences to life without the possibility of parole.
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Who were the three men not on the receiving end of this sweeping clemency?
The three inmates not included are: Robert Bowers, who is responsible for the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, which left 11 people dead; Dylann Roof, a White supremacist who killed nine Black parishioners at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who worked with his now-dead brother to perpetuate the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds.
Biden issued a statement in conjunction with the move:
I’ve dedicated my career to reducing violent crime and ensuring a fair and effective justice system.
Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal 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.
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 stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.
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Biden briefly served as a public defender in 1969. That his conscience leads him to conclude the use of the death penalty must be stopped at the federal level may be debatable, but it’s difficult then to square the move with the exclusion of Bowers, Roof, and Tsarnaev unless one infers a political calculus is involved.
Earlier in December, Biden caused a stir by first issuing a broad pardon to his son, Hunter, followed in mid-December by pardons for 39 individuals and sentence commutations for nearly 1,500 others.
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There has already been significant discussion and speculation around pardons President-elect Donald Trump may issue upon taking office, including J6 defendants, pro-lifers convicted under the FACE Act, and even potentially New York Mayor Eric Adams.
