United States President Joe Biden has commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row in his weeks in office before the second term of President-elect Donald Trump.
The move, announced on Monday, means that the 37 individuals will instead face life in prison for their convictions, according to the White House. Three other inmates convicted of deadly hate or “terrorism” crimes will continue to face execution.
“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 in a statement.
“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,” he said.
The announcement comes just weeks before Trump is set to take office. The president-elect, whose first four-year term ended in 2021, has regularly called for the death penalty for undocumented migrants who kill US citizens.
During his first term, he oversaw the execution of 13 federal inmates – the most under any president in the last 120 years.
Biden, who defeated Trump in the 2020 election, campaigned as an opponent of the death penalty. His administration imposed a moratorium on most federal executions when he took office.
“These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,” Biden said in the statement.
Three inmates will remain on federal death row.
They include Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – who helped carry out the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three in 2013 – and Dylann Roof – a white supremacist who in 2015 shot and killed nine Black churchgoers in a racist attack in Charleston – South Carolina.
Robert Bowers, who killed 11 Jewish worshippers during a 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, will also continue to face execution.
Meanwhile, nine people convicted of murdering fellow prisoners, four convicted of murders committed during bank robberies and one who killed a prison guard were among those who had their sentences commuted.
Also included was Billie Jerome Allen, who was convicted in 1998 at the age of 19 for killing a security guard during a robbery in Missouri.
The case has long attracted attention for what Amnesty International has described as “serious concerns about racial bias, his young age at the time, and a lack of evidence linking him to the crime.”
‘Cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment’
Biden’s announcement follows urging from several rights groups, who pointed to Trump’s rhetoric and history when it comes to federal executions.
There had been no executions at the federal level since 2003 when Trump took office. The last federal execution in the US took place on January 16, 2021, four days before Trump left the White House.
In a statement, Amnesty International USA Executive Director Paul O’Brien applauded Biden’s move, but said he needed to go further.
“The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, and President Biden’s eleventh-hour decision before leaving office to commute these death sentences is a big moment for human rights,” O’Brien said.
“The President’s decision is a significant step towards his 2020 promise to end the death penalty at the federal level and incentivize states to follow suit,” he said.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states. Six others – Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee – have moratoriums in place.
In 2024, there were 25 executions in the US at the state level.
