US President, 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 comes after campaigners warned that the president-elect, Donald Trump, backs the death penalty and restarted federal executions during his first term after a 17-year hiatus.
“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 the death row prisoners who had their sentences commuted and will now face life in prison: Thomas Steven Sanders, sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of a 12-year-old girl in Louisiana; Len Davis, a former police officer sentenced to death for ordering the killing of a woman after she filed a complaint against him at the New Orleans Police Department; and Richard Allen Jackson, who was convicted of the kidnapping, rape, and murder of a 22-year-old jogger in Asheville, North Carolina.
Biden pledged to end the death penalty during his presidential campaign and had been under pressure from progressive lawmakers and criminal justice activists to commute the sentences of federal death row inmates before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
Trump has said he would seek to expand the death penalty in his second term. During its first White House stint, the Trump administration carried out 13 federal executions, ending a 17-year hiatus.
All but three of the 16 individuals who have been executed for federal crimes since 1988 were put to death during Trump’s term in office.
It is the highest number of death sentences commuted by any president in the modern era.
