The decision affects 37 of the 40 prisoners who were awaiting execution a month after Trump arrived at the White House
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, has granted a commutation of sentences to the majority of prisoners who were currently on death row awaiting execution in federal prisons, less than a month before the inauguration of his successor, Republican Joe Biden.
“Today I commute the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals who are on federal death row to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole,” Biden said, according to a statement published by the White House, in which he emphasizes that this measure “is consistent with the moratorium imposed by the Administration on federal executions, except in cases of terrorism and mass murder for reasons of hate.”
“I have dedicated my career to reducing violent crime and ensuring a fair and effective justice system,” he said. “Let there be no mistakes. I condemn these murderers, I mourn for the victims of their despicable acts, and I grieve for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” the president added.
However, he argued that his experience leads him to be “more convinced than ever” that “the use of capital punishment at the federal level must be stopped.” “In good conscience, I cannot sit idly by and let a new Administration resume the executions that I stopped,” he concluded.
Biden’s measure excludes Dzokhar Tsarnaev, one of those responsible for the attack carried out in 2013 during the Boston marathon; Dylan Roof, a white supremacist who murdered nine people in 2015 in a church frequented by African-American worshipers in Charleston; and Robert Bowers, who murdered eleven people in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.
