US President Joe Biden announced on Monday that he has commuted the death sentences for 37 out of 40 federal inmates, acting ahead of Donald Trump’s return, who previously oversaw a notable number of executions during his first term in office.
As Biden’s term winds up, he has been under pressure from death penalty opponents to commute the sentences of those on death row to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, a move he has now implemented for the 37 inmates.
This action leaves only a few notorious criminals driven by hate or terrorism still subject to the federal death penalty, which has been paused during Biden’s administration.
“These commutations are in line with the moratorium on federal executions that my Administration has instituted, except in cases involving terrorism and mass murders fueled by hate,” Biden remarked during his announcement.
“I am converting the sentences of 37 out of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole,” he stated.
The three inmates who will remain on federal death row include Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who helped carry out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and Dylann Roof, an avowed white supremacist who in 2015 shot and killed nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina.
Robert Bowers, who killed 11 Jewish worshippers during a 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, will also remain on death row.
Those commuted included nine people convicted of murdering fellow prisoners, four for murders committed during bank robberies and one who killed a prison guard.
