Biden commutes most federal death sentences ahead of Trump’s term | Joe Biden News

US President Joe Biden has commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 people at the federal level death row In his weeks in office ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s second term.

The move, announced Monday, means the 37 individuals will instead face life in prison for their conviction, according to the White House. Three other prisoners convicted of deadly hate crimes or “terrorism” crimes will still face the death penalty.

“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, I mourn for the victims of their despicable actions, and I ache for all the families who have suffered an 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 using force,” he added. death penalty At the federal level,” he said.

This announcement comes just weeks before Trump takes office. The president-elect, whose first four-year term ended in 2021, has regularly called for the death penalty for illegal immigrants who kill American citizens.

During his first term, he oversaw the executions of 13 federal prisoners — the most of any president in the past 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 my administration’s moratorium on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass killings,” Biden said in the statement.

Three inmates will remain on federal death row.

Among them is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev – who helped carry out the operation Boston Marathon bombing Which killed three in 2013 – and Dylan’s roof In 2015, a white supremacist shot and killed nine black churchgoers in a racist attack in Charleston, South Carolina.

Robert PowersHe, who killed 11 Jewish worshipers during a 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, will also still face the death penalty.

Meanwhile, among those whose sentences were commuted were nine people convicted of murdering fellow prisoners, four convicted of murders committed during bank robberies, and one person who killed a prison guard.

Also among the participants was Billie Jerome Allen, who was convicted in 1998 when she was 19 for killing a security guard during a robbery in Missouri.

The case has long attracted attention for what Amnesty International described as “serious concerns about racial bias, his young age at the time, and the lack of evidence linking him to the crime.”

“Cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment”

Biden’s announcement comes after urging from several rights groups, which pointed to Trump’s rhetoric and history when it comes to federal executions.

There have been no federal executions since 2003, when Trump took office. The last federal execution in the United States was carried out on January 16, 2021, four days before Trump left the White House.

Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International US, in a statement praised Biden’s move, but said he needed to go further.

“The death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment, and the decision made by President Biden 11 hours before leaving office to commute these death sentences represents a major moment for human rights,” O’Brien said.

“The President’s decision is an important step toward his 2020 promise to end the death penalty at the federal level and motivate states to do the same,” he said.

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states. Six other states – Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee – have moratoriums.

In 2024, there were 25 Executions In the United States at the state level.