Tuesday, December 24, 2024
Year : 2, Issue: 17
ABC7 News: President Joe Biden is commuting the sentences of 37 inmates on federal death row, the White House said Monday.
The move reduces the sentence for all but three of the 40 inmates on federal death row. Biden said that the commutations are “consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions,” with the exception of terrorism and hate-motivated mass killings.
The three people on the federal execution list who were not on Biden’s commutation list are Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing; Robert Bowers, who was convicted of the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue antisemitic attack; and Dylann Roof, who killed nine Black churchgoers in a racially motivated shooting in South Carolina.
According to the White House fact sheet about the move, the recipients of the commutations will have their sentences “reclassified from execution to life without the possibility of parole.”
The White House fact sheet said that the move was an effort to prevent President-elect Donald Trump from “carrying out the execution sentences that would not be handed down under current policy and practice.”
This decision comes after some notable figures and many activists called for Biden to take action. Pope Francis has called for the sentences of Americans on death row to be commuted during his Angelus address in October, the Vatican News Source reported.
“Today, I feel compelled to ask all of you to pray for the inmates on death row in the United States,” the Pope said at the time, according to the report. “Let us pray that their sentences may be commuted or changed. Let us think of these brothers and sisters of ours and ask the Lord for the grace to save them from death.”
It is also an issue of racial justice. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 38% of federal death row inmates are Black — compared to the 14% of total American population according to the Pew Research Center. About 56% of the 40 men on federal death row were men of color, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
On CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, a close confidant of Biden, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said that he had urged the president to take action, citing the unfairness in the justice system.
