Creators
December 23, 2024
Why did President Joe Biden commute the sentences of 37
federal death row inmates?
To start with, the president campaigned in 2020 on ending
the federal death penalty. Although he directed the Justice Department to issue
a moratorium on federal executions, legislation proposing to end
state-sponsored death failed to gain any traction in Congress during his
administration.
Additionally, President-elect Donald Trump vowed to carry
out executions once in office. His track record reveals he isn't kidding.
During the last six months of his prior term, the federal government carried
out 13 executions. Contrast that with state executions in 2020, Trump's last
year in office. There were seven executions in five states. In 2021, there were
eight executions in the same number of states — all below the Mason-Dixon line.
The Trump administration conducted more executions in five
months than any other presidency since the turn of the 20th century and carried
out six executions during a presidential transition period, more than any other
administration in the history of the United States. Prior to 2020, the federal
government carried out only three executions in the modern era of the death
penalty, most notably Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber.
Whether it was a ploy to bolster his tough-guy bona fides or
a lowbrow pitch to his "law and order" constituency, then-President
Trump's bloodlust saw no boundary.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, those
executed by the federal government included the first Native American ever
executed by the federal government for the murder of a member of his own tribe
on tribal lands.
The Trump administration oversaw the first federal execution
in 68 years of an offender who was a teenager at the time the crime was
committed.
The federal executions of 2020 included: the first federal
execution in 57 years for a crime committed in a state that had abolished the
death penalty; executions carried out against the wishes of the victims'
families; and the first lame-duck executions in more than a century.
As of December 2024, here were 40 men on federal death row.
Biden commuted the sentences of 37. All of the offenders were convicted of
murder. They will now serve life in prison without the possibility of parole.
According to The New York Times, of the 37 men whose
sentences were commuted, 15 are white, 15 are Black, six are Latino and one is
Asian. They were sentenced in 16 states, including three that had abolished the
death penalty. Nine are on death row because they were convicted of killing
fellow federal prisoners.
The three men who did not receive commutations are notorious
mass killers. According to Newsweek, they include Dylann Roof, who carried out
the racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in
Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted of
carrying out the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and injured more
than 260 in 2013; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 congregants after storming
the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic
attack in U.S. history.
Prior to these commutations, Biden had already begun to
deploy his clemency power aggressively — commuting the sentences of nearly
1,500 people earlier this month, as well as his controversial pardon of his son
Hunter Biden.
In a strange sort of way, President Biden's bold use of his
clemency power to prevent the systematic execution of federal death row inmates
strengthens the argument in support of the death penalty. He left three men on
death row to most assuredly face death. While generally, Biden revealed his disdain
for the death penalty, he does believe — and his actions prove it — that there
needs to be a death penalty for some.
You are either for the death penalty or you're against it.
Like the old saying goes, you can't be a little bit pregnant. One can't be an
opponent of the death penalty only until something really bad happens.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett,
Kelly & George P.C. His book "The Executioner's Toll, 2010" was
released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and
follow him on X @MatthewTMangino.
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