If President Biden’s term in office is coming to an end, he is reportedly considering commuting the sentences of most, if not all, of the forty men on the federal government’s death row.
The Wall Street Journal quotes sources familiar with the matter: reported the move would frustrate President-elect Trump’s plan to streamline executions when he takes office in January.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, who oversees federal prisons, has recommended that Biden commute all but a handful of egregious sentences, the sources said.
The newspaper reported that possible exceptions could include Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber who killed three people and injured more than 250; Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people in the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh; and Dylann Roof, who killed nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
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President Biden will speak about his administration’s economic playbook and the future of the American economy at the Brookings Institution in Washington on December 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Those who could see their death sentences commuted to life in prison include an ex-Marine who murdered two young girls and later a female Navy officer, a Las Vegas man convicted of the kidnapping and murder of a 12-year-old girl, a Chicago podiatrist who fatally shot a patient to prevent her from testifying in a Medicare fraud investigation and two men were convicted in a kidnapping-for-ransom case that resulted in the murder of five Russian and Georgian immigrants.
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The move came after Biden, a lifelong Catholic, spoke Pope Francis Thursday. In his weekly prayer, Pope Francis asked for the commutation of America’s condemned prisoners.
According to some sources, a presidential decision could come by Christmas. The outlet noted that the biggest question is the scope of commutations for death row inmates.
President Biden speaks on a podium (AP)
Biden is the first president to openly oppose the death penalty, and on his 2020 campaign website he stated that he would “commit to passing legislation to abolish the death penalty at the federal level and encouraging states to follow the example of the federal government to follow.”
In January 2021, Biden initially considered an executive order, sources familiar with the matter told The Associated Press, but the White House did not issue one.
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Six months in government, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a moratorium on the federal death penalty to further study it. The limited action has meant that no federal executions have taken place under Biden.
