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Biden commutes sentences of 37 US death row inmates
US President Joe Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 people sentenced to death by federal courts, less than a month before Donald Trump returns to the White House, the outgoing president announced.
The 37 inmates are now sentenced to life in prison “without the possibility of parole,” Democrat Biden said in the statement.
Biden is against the death penalty, and during his administration the Justice Department issued a moratorium on executions in the federal system, which is distinct from sentences handed down by judges in the states.
The three convicts who did not benefit from a presidential pardon were Djokhar Tsarnaev, one of the perpetrators of the attack on the Boston Marathon in 2013 , Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who killed nine black people in a Charleston church in 2015 , and Robert Bowers, convicted of killing eleven people in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 .
Among those who benefited were nine people convicted of killing other prisoners, four for murders committed during bank robberies and one who killed a prison guard.
“Make no mistake: I condemn these killers, I feel sorry for the victims of their despicable acts, and I grieve that so many families have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said.
“But guided by my conscience and my experience… I am more convinced than ever that we must end the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” he added.
During his election campaign this year, Trump defended the use of the death penalty to punish migrants who murder American citizens and drug and human traffickers .
During the first government of the Republican magnate (2017-2021), the United States suspended a moratorium on executions in the federal jurisdiction that had been in place since 2003.
In the last six months of his term, there were 13 federal executions , more than any other American president in 120 years.
The last one was carried out by lethal injection in an Indiana prison in January 2021, four days before Trump left the White House.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states , and a moratorium is in effect in six others (Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee).
In 2024, there were 25 executions in the country, all ordered at the state level. (Also: Pope calls for avoiding execution of those sentenced to death in the United States )
