Pressure Mounts On President Joe Biden To Commute Federal Death Sentences

There are increasing calls for US President Joe Biden to commute the execution sentences of the more than three dozen federal offenders on execution Row before Donald Trump comes to the White House.

During his last six months in office, Trump oversaw 13 fatal injections, more than any other US leader in 120 years. He also resumed federal executions.

Biden opposed the death sentence throughout his presidential campaign, and after he was elected, the Justice Department placed a federal moratorium on its application. Throughout his reelection campaign against Kamala Harris, Trump made repeated promises to extend the death penalty to immigrants who peddle drugs, and human traffickers and who kill US citizens.

There had been no federal inmates put to death in the United States since 2003 until Trump resumed federal executions in July 2020. A coalition of death penalty opponents submitted a letter to Biden on Monday asking him to commute federal death sentences to life in prison without parole.

“The only irreversible action you can take to prevent President-elect Trump from renewing his execution spree, as he has vowed to do, is commuting the death sentences of those on federal death row now,” the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and more than 130 other organizations said.

“Your ability to change the course of the death penalty in the United States will be a defining, legacy-building moment in American history,” they said.

The Death Penalty Information Centre reports that 40 inmates, all men, have been found guilty of federal offenses and are awaiting execution; some of these cases are well-known. Among them are: –

• The 31-year-old “Boston Bomber,” Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was found guilty of killing two people in the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, 2013, and was given the death penalty.
• Dylann Roof, 30, a self-described white supremacist, shot and killed nine Black parishioners during a Bible study session at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015.
• 52-year-old Robert Bowers, an anti-Semitic Pennsylvanian attacked Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue on October 27, 2018, killing 11 Jewish worshippers.

One inmate on federal Death Row killed a prison guard, while nine other inmates were found guilty of killing other inmates. For killing people during bank robberies, four received death sentences. Nidal Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people during a rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, is one of four prisoners on the military’s Death Row. Since 1961, the US military has not executed anyone.

Pope Francis during his Sunday speech at the Vatican, urged the audience to pray for American Death Row inmates and stated that their sentences had to “be commuted, changed.”

Biden has been inundated with clemency requests from various religious leaders, former state and federal prison officials, former prosecutors, and dozens of families of murder victims after he controversially pardoned his son Hunter this month for tax and gun offenses.

A letter from prominent business leaders encouraging Biden to use his clemency power was signed by Sheryl Sandberg, a former Facebook executive, and Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group. The Washington Post claims that the White House is thinking about “taking steps to commute at least some federal death sentences. No decision has been made, however, about the breadth or scope of such a possible move, including whether to do it at all,” the newspaper said.

In 2024, there have been 23 executions in the US, and two more are planned before the year is over. Of the 50 states in the US, 23 have abolished the capital penalty, while six more—Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee—have moratoriums on the death penalty.

Federal executions are performed by lethal injection at a prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. The final one took place on January 16, 2021, four days before Trump departed from office.