Joe Biden has commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 federal death row inmates, changing their punishment to life imprisonment without parole.
The decision follows month of pressure from campaigners who warned that president-elect Donald Trump backs the death penalty and restarted federal executions during his first term after a pause of nearly two decades.
“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in a statement released on Monday.
“But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice-president, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
Among those spared is Len Davis, a former New Orleans police officer who masterminded a drug protection ring involving several other officers and arranged the murder of a woman who filed a brutality complaint against him.
There is also a commutation for Norris Holder, who was sentenced to death for a two-man bank robbery during which a security guard died. Prosecutors said Holder may not have fired the fatal shot.
The clemency action applies to all federal death row inmates except three convicted of terrorism or hate-motivated mass murder: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of carrying out the 2013 Boston marathon bombing attack; Dylann Roof, who shot dead nine Black church members in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who stormed a synagogue in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community and killed 11 worshippers in 2018.
Madeline Cohen, a lawyer for Holder, told the Washington Post on Saturday: “Many of the men on federal death row were prosecuted during a superheated political era and an overzealous tough-on-crime approach that proved to be deeply flawed. It’s about a different era and the lessons we learned from that time. That is part of what President Biden will be reflecting upon when he makes this decision.”
The majority of the 40 men held on federal death row are people of color, and 38% are Black, Robin Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, previously told the Guardian. Nearly one in four men were 21 or younger at the time of the crime.
As a senator, Biden championed a 1994 crime bill that expanded the federal death penalty to cover 60 new offences. He boasted: “I am the guy who put these death penalties in this bill.” The legislation is now widely seen as having contributed to mass incarceration, particularly affecting Black men, and many of those currently on death row were sentenced under its provisions.
But during his 2020 presidential election campaign, Biden reversed his long-held support for capital punishment, pledging to eliminate it at the federal level. He cited concerns about wrongful convictions and racial disparities in the justice system.
The Biden administration duly imposed a moratorium on federal executions. The White House said Biden’s latest action would prevent the next administration from carrying out the execution sentences that would not be handed down under current policy and practice.
Under Trump, more people incarcerated in the federal system were put to death than under the previous 10 presidents combined.
According to the White House, Biden has issued more commutations at this point in his presidency than any of his recent predecessors at the same point in their first terms. Earlier this month he announced clemency for about 1,500 Americans – the most ever in a single day – who have shown successful rehabilitation and a commitment to making communities safer.
Biden is also the first president to issue categorical pardons to individuals convicted of simple use and possession of marijuana and to former LGBTQ service members convicted of private conduct because of their sexual orientation.
Earlier this month the president sparked a political outcry by pardoning his son, Hunter, for federal felony gun and tax convictions that could have led to a prison sentence. Biden, who leaves office on 20 January, had repeatedly promised not to issue such a pardon.
Additional reporting by Oliver Laughland and Sam Levin.
