President Joe Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of 37 men on federal death row, before Donald Trump could return to office and carry out his planned “execution spree.”
“I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” Biden said in a statement. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
The prisoners on death row will now serve life in prison instead. Biden also noted that he wouldn’t commute the sentences of those charged with hate crimes or terrorism. Dylan Roof, who killed nine Black people at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston in 2015, Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who helped carry out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, will each remain on death row.
Biden’s announcement has already infuriated the right, who see it as some great injustice that men who were set to be executed will instead be spending the rest of their lives in a cage.
“It’s horrifying that Pres. Biden has granted clemency to some of our nation’s most monstrous killers,” Senator John Kennedy wrote on X. “Their victims deserve better, and justice demands more.”
“I think it’s yet another abuse of the pardon power,” said Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy. “He wiped the slate clean … and he did it in a way that is a categorical change of the law.”
“It wasn’t BAD ENOUGH Joe Biden let in violent criminals and terrorists across our border ON PURPOSE. Now, he’s commuting the sentences of 37 of America’s OWN most dangerous criminals,” chimed Speaker Mike Johnson on X. “This is a slap in the face to the families who have suffered immeasurably at the hands of these animals.”
