(Adnkronos) – US President Joe Biden has commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 federal inmates, stepping in ahead of the return of Donald Trump, who oversaw a record number of lethal injections during his first term. With less than a month before the end of his presidency, Biden faced mounting calls from death penalty opponents to commute the death sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole, a sentence the 37 convicts will now serve. The decision leaves only a handful of high-profile killers who acted out of hatred or terrorism facing the federal death penalty, which has been placed under a moratorium under Biden. “These commutations are consistent with my administration’s moratorium on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,” Biden said in a statement.
“I will commute the death sentences of 37 of the 40 people sentenced to death at the federal level to life in prison without the possibility of parole,” he added. Among the three inmates who will remain on federal death row are Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who helped carry out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and Dylann Roof, an avowed white supremacist who shot and killed nine black worshipers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
Robert Bowers, who killed 11 Jewish worshippers in a 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, will also remain on death row. Regarding the commuted sentences, Biden explained: “Don’t get me wrong: I condemn these killers, I grieve for the victims of their despicable acts and I feel for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said. “But guided by my conscience and my experience…I am more convinced than ever that we must end the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”
