Civil rights groups who were anxiously preparing for the onset of Donald Trump’s presidency breathed a sigh of relief on Monday as President Joe Biden announced the largest single-day commutation of federal death row inmates in modern history.
The White House announced early Monday morning that the president would commute the sentences of 37 inmates awaiting execution in the federal prison system. Now, just three people will remain on death row following the commutations: mass murderers Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers.
Much of Washington is now deserted, with the Christmas holidays driving many lawmakers, staffers, and other federal workers out of the city for several weeks. The president’s action Monday came after a weeks-long advocacy campaign launched by the ACLU and other opponents of capital punishment urging Biden in this direction, one that enlisted the aid of both the president’s allies on Capitol Hill, actors such as Martin Sheen (known for his West Wing portrayal of President Jed Bartlett), as well as business leaders including Richard Branson and Sheryl Sandberg.
The biggest name to back the effort by far was Pope Francis, who noted the issue during his daily address in St Peter’s Square.
Monday’s announcement also followed a move by Biden earlier this month to commute the sentences of hundreds of federal inmates previously shifted to home detention. Similar to his latest decision, the commutation of 1,500 Americans was the largest single-day act of clemency carried out by a U.S. president in modern times.
The president’s commutation of death row sentences is likely to be received approvingly by his Democratic base, in contrast to the December 12 announcement of clemency which swept up, among others, a former federal judge convicted of sending children to for-profit jail facilities in exchange for bribes. The “Kids For Cash” scandal is widely considered to be one of the worst black marks on the U.S. judiciary in its history.
The news that Michael Conahan would be among those granted clemency earlier this month drew disgusted condemnations from many in his home state of Pennsylvania including its Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, who was thought to have been runner-up to serve as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate during the 2024 election.
By comparison, while MAGA loyalists such as Senator-elect Jim Banks were sounding off about Biden’s order on Monday, relieved statements of approval poured in from top Democrats on the Hill who supported the “commute the row” campaign and others.
“By commuting the sentences of 37 individuals on death row, President Biden has taken the most consequential step of any president in our history to address the immoral and unconstitutional harms of capital punishment,” said Anthony Romero, the ACLU’s executive director.
Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, had been one of the Democrats on Biden’s case about death penalty commutations. Durbin was one of the Democrats who offered at least a half-hearted defense of the president’s decision to pardon his son, Hunter Biden, who was awaiting sentencing on tax and gun charges. Biden had vowed specifically not to pardon his son, a statement he and his aides such as press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre repeated several times over the course of the 2024 election.
“Thank you @POTUS Biden for answering this call to action to address the longstanding injustices faced in our legal system,” wrote Rep. Adriano Espaillat. “Today’s action represents a core tenet of humanity and upholds the moral integrity of our nation’s justice system.”
Richard Branson, in a Twitter thread, wrote: “Commuting these federal death sentences sends an important signal that there are alternatives to state-sanctioned killing. By championing forgiveness and mercy, President Biden has come down on the right side of history.”
“The death penalty is broken. It’s inhumane and unfair. It’s costly and wasteful. And it doesn’t deliver justice or make communities safer.”
Civil rights groups had feared a return to the accelerated pace of executions under Trump’s first term when the president-elect takes office in January. Federal executions were halted completely before Trump took office, but by the end of his four years in the presidency Donald Trump had overseen more executions than any U.S. president in 100 years. The 13 executions carried out all took place during Trump’s final year in office.
Trump himself remains very open about his desire to expand use of the death penalty beyond the standard the Supreme Court established in Coker vs Georgia. Trump has said that he would expand use of capital punishment to those convicted of drug trafficking offenses, possibly including low-level dealers. This would require a major rewriting of legal precedent by the nation’s highest court.
“These are terrible, terrible, horrible people who are responsible for death, carnage and crime all over the country,” Trump said in 2022. “We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.”
