Biden commutes federal death sentences
December 23, 2024
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CWN Editor's Note: President Joe Biden has commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 prisoners awaiting execution for federal crimes.
Biden took the action shortly after his December 20 meeting with Pope Francis, who had urged him to lift all death sentences. The President said that he was “guided by my conscience and my experience” to the conclusion that “we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”
Biden did not commute the death sentences of three men who have been convicted of multiple killings: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who with his brother carried out the Boston Marathon bombings of 2013; Dylann Roof, who killed nine people at a Black church in South Carolina; and Robert Bowers, who killed eleven people at a Pittsburgh Synagogue in 2018.
All of the 37 people whose sentences were commuted since face life in prison.
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