WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced Monday that he is commuting the death sentences of 37 inmates, leaving only three people on death row in federal prisons. The commuted sentences will be reclassified to life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Biden made the announcement, saying that he is more convinced than ever that the use of the death penalty at the federal level should be stopped. He condemned the murders committed by the prisoners, expressed his sympathy for the victims’ families, and said that he cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that he halted.
The three men who will remain on federal death row are Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people in the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018; Dylann Roof, who killed nine people in a shooting at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers in 2013.
No federal inmates have been executed during Biden’s presidency, but the Justice Department said this year that it would seek the death penalty for the white supremacist who killed 10 Black people in a shooting at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store in 2022.
Biden’s move follows a moratorium on federal executions imposed by his administration. Attorneys for some of the inmates, including Billie Allen, who has maintained his innocence, hope that the president will commute more sentences in the future.
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump, who was a strong supporter of the death penalty, had planned to seek the death penalty for drug dealers and immigrants who kill Americans. Thirteen federal prisoners were put to death during his first term.