For the first time since 2017, a U.S. president has commuted the sentence of a federal prisoner on death row.
President Joe Biden broke the streak of inaction in a big way Monday by announcing that he is commuting the death sentences of nearly all those currently on federal death row.
Thirty-seven of the 40 prisoners who were previously facing death will now serve life sentences instead.
“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.”
The three prisoners who remain on death row were left there because of their involvement in “terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,” Biden said, per The Washington Post.
“Those he did not spare are: Dylann Roof, the white supremacist convicted of killing nine Black parishioners at a South Carolina church in 2015; Robert Bowers, who carried out the country’s deadliest antisemitic attack when he killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber,” The Washington Post reported.
Biden’s announcement comes after weeks of advocacy work by faith groups and other organizations, who called on the president to empty federal death row before leaving office.
Some of those advocates are quoted in documents about Biden’s decision that were released by the White House Monday.
“The White House distributed a lengthy list of statements from various people applauding his decision, including some murder victims’ relatives, former correctional leaders and criminal justice reform advocates,” The Washington Post reported.
One of the statements came from Donnie Oliverio, a retired police officer in Columbus, Ohio. Oliverio’s partner was killed by one of the men whose sentence was commuted.
“Putting to death the person who killed my police partner and best friend would have brought me no peace,” he said in his statement. “The President has done what is right here, and what is consistent with the faith he and I share.”
But Biden’s decision has not been universally applauded. Conservative commentators and others have taken to social media sites like X to criticize the president’s move.