(WASHINGTON) — On Monday, President Joe Biden announced a momentous decision to commute the sentences of 37 out of 40 individuals currently on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment. This move comes just weeks ahead of President-elect Donald Trump, who has been an outspoken supporter of expanding capital punishment, taking office.
This significant action spares the lives of those convicted of grave offenses, including the murders of law enforcement and military personnel, killings on federal property, and violent crimes such as bank robberies and drug trafficking. The list also includes individuals responsible for the deaths of guards or fellow inmates in federal facilities.
With Biden’s announcement, only three federal inmates remain on death row: Dylann Roof, convicted for the racially motivated massacre of nine Black churchgoers at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the perpetrator of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, marking the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
“Throughout my career, I have aimed to reduce violent crime and promote a just legal system,” Biden remarked in his announcement. “Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life without the possibility of parole. These commutations reflect the moratorium my administration has established on federal executions, with exceptions only for cases involving terrorism or hate-driven mass murders.”
Back in 2021, the Biden Administration imposed a moratorium on federal capital punishment to reassess existing protocols, effectively halting executions during his term. However, Biden has previously indicated a desire to take this further, expressing a commitment to abolishing federal executions entirely, without any exceptions for terrorism or hate crimes.
During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden’s website highlighted his goal to “work towards passing legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level and encourage states to follow suit.”
However, such commitments were noticeably absent from his reelection platform prior to suspending his campaign in July.
“I want to be clear: I condemn these murderers, mourn for their victims, and empathize with the families who have faced unimaginable loss,” Biden emphasized in his statement. “Yet, informed by my conscience and my experiences as a public defender, Senate Judiciary Committee chair, vice president, and now president, I am increasingly convinced that we must abolish the death penalty at the federal level.”
Biden also subtly critiqued Trump, stating, “In good conscience, I cannot permit a new administration to restart the executions I have halted.”
Trump, who is set to take office on January 20, has regularly advocated for an expansion of the death penalty. In his 2024 campaign announcement, he suggested that individuals “caught selling drugs” should face the death penalty for their actions. He also committed to supporting executions for drug and human traffickers and praised China’s harsh measures against drug dealers. During his first term, Trump played a significant role in promoting the death penalty for drug offenders.
Under Trump’s presidency, there were 13 federal executions, the highest number for any president in modern history, with some occurring swiftly enough to contribute to the spread of COVID-19 at the federal death row facility in Indiana.
These executions marked the first federal death sentences carried out since 2003, with the final three occurring after the 2020 Election Day but before Trump left office, the first instance of a lame-duck president executing inmates since Grover Cleveland in 1889.
Biden has faced increasing pressure from advocacy groups urging him to take steps to prevent Trump from broadening the use of capital punishment against federal inmates. This latest announcement follows Biden’s recent commutation of approximately 1,500 individuals released from prison and placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic, along with 39 others convicted of nonviolent offenses—marking the largest single-day clemency act in modern history.
Additionally, this announcement comes shortly after Biden’s controversial pardon of his son Hunter for federal gun and tax offenses, which raised eyebrows in Washington. The pardon prompted discussions about whether Biden would consider broader preemptive pardons for administration officials and allies potentially at risk of being targeted by Trump’s future administration.
Speculation regarding Biden commuting federal death sentences heightened last week after the White House announced his upcoming visit to Italy for his final foreign trip of the presidency next month. As a practicing Catholic, Biden is set to meet with Pope Francis, who has recently called for prayers for U.S. death row inmates, hoping for their sentences to be commuted.
Martin Luther King III, who has urged Biden to reconsider death sentences, commended the president’s actions in a statement released by the White House, affirming that the president “has done what no previous president was willing to do: take meaningful and lasting action to not only acknowledge the death penalty’s racist roots but also to address its ongoing inequities.”
Donnie Oliverio, a retired police officer from Ohio whose partner was killed by one of the individuals whose death sentence was commuted, shared his perspective, stating that executing “the person who killed my police partner and best friend would have brought me no peace.”
“The president has made the right decision here,” Oliverio added, “and it aligns with the faith that both he and I share.”
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Weissert reported from West Palm Beach, Florida.
