On Monday morning, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 individuals on federal death row, changing their punishments to life imprisonment.
“Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole,” Biden wrote in a statement. “These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”
Who did Biden commute on death row in Georgia?
President Joe Biden on Dec. 12, 2024, granted pardons to 39 people convicted of nonviolent crimes and commuted the sentences of 1,499. It marked the largest single-day clemency act in modern U.S. history.
Among those who had their sentences commuted were two men from Georgia, Meier Jason Brown and Anthony Battle.
Battle was originally sentenced to death in 1997 for the murder of a prison guard, making him the first Georgian to receive a federal death sentence after capital punishment was reinstated by Congress in 1988.
Brown also received a death sentence in Savannah for killing a postal worker in 2003.
Who remains on federal death row?
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Dylann Roof: mass murderer that perpetrated the Charleston church shooting in 2015.
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Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: 2013 Boston Marathon bomber.
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Robert Bowers: shot and killed 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.
To see the full list of individuals commuted, visit whitehouse.gov.
Vanessa Countryman is the Trending Topics Reporter for the the Deep South Connect Team Georgia. Email her at Vcountryman@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Biden has commuted 2 federal death row sentences in Georgia