Journal De Bruxelles - Biden commutes almost all federal death sentences

Three men, convicted of terrorism or hate crimes, will remain on federal death row: one of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombers, a gunman who murdered 11 Jewish worshippers in 2018 and a white supremacist who killed nine Black churchgoers in 2015.

Democrat Biden had imposed a moratorium on the federal death penalty but was under pressure to act before leaving the White House on January 20, amid signals from Republican Trump that he would resume the practice.

Those who had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment included nine people convicted of murdering fellow prisoners, four for murders committed during bank robberies and one who killed a prison guard.

"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.

"But guided by my conscience and my experience... 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."

Trump ended a 17-year pause in federal executions in 2020, during his first term in office. He then oversaw 13 lethal injections during his final six months in power, more than any US leader in 120 years.

Rights groups hailed Biden's commutations.

"President Biden has taken the most consequential step of any president in our history to address the immoral and unconstitutional harms of capital punishment," Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said in a statement.

- 'Historic day' -

Activist Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., said it was a "historic day."

The three remaining federal death row inmates include Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who helped carry out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and Dylann Roof, an avowed white supremacist who in 2015 shot and killed nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina.

Robert Bowers, who killed 11 Jews at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue in 2018 in the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in US history, also remains on death row.

Biden stressed the commutations were only going to those convicted of crimes "other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder."

Biden campaigned for the White House as a death penalty opponent, and the Justice Department issued a moratorium on its use at the federal level after he became president.

But Trump frequently spoke on the campaign trail about expanding the use of capital punishment to include migrants who kill American citizens and drug and human traffickers.

The death penalty is normally carried out at state level in the United States but the federal government can also seek execution for a limited set of crimes, including terrorism and killings of judicial officials.

The last federal execution -- carried out by lethal injection in Terre Haute, Indiana -- occurred on January 16, 2021, four days before Trump left office.

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 states, while six others have moratoriums in place.

In 2024, there have been 25 executions in the United States, all at the state level.

Biden has been following a tradition of outgoing presidents who use their constitutional power to issue clemency in their final months in office.

Earlier this month he commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people who had been placed on home confinement during the Covid-19 pandemic, the most ever in a single day, and pardoned 39 people for "non-violent" offenses.

But Biden, 82, caused controversy by pardoning his troubled son Hunter, who faced sentencing on gun and tax charges, despite previously promising not to do so.

A.Thys--JdB