President Biden Commutes Sentences of 37 Federal Death Row Inmates, Spares Killers of Sailor, Children
President Biden announced on Monday that he has commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 inmates on federal death row, commuting their sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The president’s decision comes after he had previously halted federal executions and has now decided not to resume them.
The inmates whose sentences were commuted include Jorge Avila-Torrez, who killed Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Amanda Snell inside her barracks in Arlington, Virginia, in 2009. Avila-Torrez confessed to entering Snell’s room through her unlocked door, binding her wrists with a power cord, and strangling her with the rest of the cord. He also pleaded guilty to stabbing 8-year-old Laura Hobbs and 9-year-old Krystal Tobias to death on Mother’s Day 2005 in Zion, Illinois.
Another inmate spared by Biden is Daryl Lawrence, who was convicted of killing Columbus Police Officer Bryan Hurst in 2005. The Justice Department, which posthumously awarded Hurst the Medal of Valor, said he was working uniformed special duty at a bank when a masked gunman entered and the two exchanged fire.
Thomas Sanders, who was found guilty of the “brutal kidnapping and murder” of 12-year-old Lexis Roberts in 2010, was also spared. Sanders dated Roberts’ mother, Suellen Roberts, whom he fatally shot in the head, and then forced Lexis into a vehicle and held her captive as he traveled east. He later murdered Lexis in a wooded area in Louisiana.
Other inmates whose sentences were commuted include Alejandro Umana, an MS-13 gang member who fatally shot brothers Ruben and Manuel Garcia Salinas at a restaurant in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Anthony Battle, who killed prison guard D’Antonio Andrew Washington with a ball-peen hammer inside a maximum-security unit at an Atlanta facility.
The Justice Department said that Sanders stabbed Lexis Roberts four times, cut her throat, and left her body in the woods where a hunter found her body. The department also said that Avila-Torrez jumped on Snell as she slept in her bed, bound her wrists with a power cord, and strangled her with the rest of the cord.
Biden’s decision was welcomed by Amnesty International USA, which said that the “death penalty is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.” Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, also praised the decision, saying it would be “one of the seminal achievements of the Biden presidency.”