Joe Biden has commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 inmates on federal death row, changing their punishment to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The decision comes after a month of pressure from activists who warned that President-elect Donald Trump supports the death penalty and resumed federal executions during his first term after a nearly two-decade hiatus.
“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, I grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and I grieve for all the families who have suffered an unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden says in a statement made public this Monday. “But guided by my conscience and my experience as a lawyer, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice president and now president, I am more convinced than ever that we must end the use of the death penalty at the federal level. “I cannot in good conscience stand by and let a new administration resume the executions that I stopped.”
Those affected by the measure
Among those affected is Len Davis, a former New Orleans police officer who led an anti-drug protection network in which other agents participated and organized the murder of a woman who filed a brutality complaint against him.
Norris Holder, sentenced to death for the bank robbery in which two men and a security guard died, has also had his sentence commuted. According to prosecutors, Holder may not have fired the fatal shot.
The clemency measure applies to all federal death row inmates, except three convicted of terrorism or hate-motivated mass murder: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of carrying out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; Dylann Roof, who shot and killed nine members of a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who stormed a synagogue in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community and killed 11 worshipers in 2018.
Last Saturday, Madeline Cohen, Holder’s lawyer, told the Washington Post: “Many of those sentenced to death at the federal level were prosecuted during heated political times and an overzealous heavy-handed approach that proved deeply flawed. “It’s about a different time and the lessons we learned from it.” That’s part of what President Biden will reflect on when he makes this decision.
Most of the 40 men held on federal death row are racialized people, and 38% are black, according to counted prior to Guardian Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Nearly one in four men was 21 years old or younger at the time of the crime.
Biden’s turn
As a senator, Biden championed a crime bill in 1994 that expanded the federal death penalty to 60 new crimes. He boasted, “I’m the one who put these death sentences in this bill.” The legislation is now widely considered to have contributed to mass incarceration, which especially affected black men, and many of those currently on death row were convicted under its provisions.
But during his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden reversed his long-standing support for capital punishment, pledging to eliminate it at the federal level. He raised concerns about wrongful convictions and racial disparities in the justice system.
The Biden Administration once imposed a moratorium on federal executions. The White House said Biden’s latest move would prevent the next administration from carrying out execution sentences that would not apply under current policy and practice.
Under Trump, more people incarcerated in the federal system were executed than under the previous 10 presidents combined.
More pardons
According to the White House, Biden has issued more commutations at this point in his presidency than any of his recent predecessors at the same point in their first terms. Earlier this month he announced pardons for about 1,500 Americans – the most ever granted in a single day – who have demonstrated successful rehabilitation and a commitment to making their communities safer.
Biden is also the first president to grant categorical pardons to people convicted of simple consumption and possession of marijuana and to former LGTBQ military personnel convicted of private conduct due to their sexual orientation.
Earlier this month, the president caused a political uproar by pardoning his son Hunter for federal gun and tax offenses that could have landed him in prison. Biden, who will leave office on January 20, had repeatedly promised not to grant such a pardon.
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