Biden commutes 37 death sentences to life imprisonment

U.S. President Joe Biden, whose term in office will officially end on January 20, 2025, has commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 federal death row inmates to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Three individuals convicted of 'terrorism' or 'hate-motivated mass killings' were excluded from this decision.

According to The Guardian, Biden's decision came after rights advocates warned him, pointing to the fact that President-elect Donald Trump supports the death penalty. During his first term, Trump resumed federal executions after a hiatus of nearly 20 years. In his statement regarding the decision on death row inmates, Biden expressed that he condemned the inmates for the heinous acts they committed and stood with the families who have experienced 'unimaginable and irreparable losses.' He stated that, guided by his conscience and his experience in current and former government roles, he was more convinced than ever that the use of the death penalty at the federal level should be halted. Biden said, "I cannot in good conscience sit back and watch a new administration restart the executions I have stopped."

3 INMATES EXCLUDED FROM THE SCOPE OF THE DECISION

Among those whose death sentences Biden decided to commute to life imprisonment were Len Davis, a former New Orleans police officer described as the 'mastermind' of a drug trafficking ring that included other police officers and who arranged for the murder of a woman who had filed a complaint against him, and Norris Holder, who carried out a bank robbery with an accomplice. Prosecutors had noted that the bullet that killed the security guard during the robbery might not have come from Holder's weapon.

The three death row inmates to whom President Joe Biden's decision does not apply are: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was found guilty of carrying out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; Dylaan Roof, who shot and killed nine Black church members in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who raided a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 and killed 11 members of the Jewish community.

BIDEN CHANGED HIS MIND ON THE DEATH PENALTY IN 2020

According to The Guardian's report, the majority of the 40 men on federal death row were not white. Robin Maher, Director of the Death Penalty Information Center, previously stated to the newspaper that 38 percent of these 40 individuals were Black. It was also shared that approximately one in four inmates was 21 years old or younger at the time the crime was committed. On the other hand, when Biden was a senator in 1994, he was one of the figures who spearheaded the bill that expanded the scope of the federal death penalty to cover 60 new crimes. However, during his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden stepped back from his long-standing support for the death penalty. Citing race-based inequalities in the justice system and wrongful convictions, he had promised to abolish the death penalty at the federal level. The Biden administration had also issued a moratorium on federal executions.

News Source: 12punto