Biden commutes sentences of almost all federal death row inmates

By Alvin Wu
Domestic Affairs
Biden commutes sentences of almost all federal death row inmates

USP Terre Haute, where federal death row is housed. U.S. BUREAU OF PRISONS/Handout

WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 (ZFJ) — President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of 40 federal inmates from execution to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Dec. 23, 2024.

The Justice Department, on July 1, 2021, imposed a temporary moratorium on federal executions pending a review of federal policies.

“These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,” said Biden in a statement.

The department, under the Biden Administration, sought the death penalty for Sayfullo Saipov, convicted of using a truck to run over 20 people, killing eight, in a terrorist attack for ISIS on Oct. 31, 2017. The federal jury did not vote unanimously for the death penalty, so he was sentenced to life in prison instead.

The department successfully pursued the death penalty for Robert Bowers, who killed 11 congregants and wounded seven people in a mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Federal prosecutors declared in court filings on Jan. 12, 2024, that it would pursue the death penalty on hate crimes charges for Payton Gendron, who shot 10 people at the Tops supermarket in Buffalo, New York, intending to kill as many black people as he could in a mass shooting. Gendron previously pleaded guilty to state charges of murder and hate-motivated domestic terrorism that carry an automatic life sentence.

The decisions of the Justice Department’s Capital Case Section remain opaque. Federal prosecutors chose not to pursue the death penalty for Patrick Crusius, who killed 23 people in a 2019 mass shooting targeting Hispanic shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. Crusius was sentenced to life in prison.

The inmates whose sentences were commuted were convicted of crimes including murder, armed bank robbery, arson, carjacking, civil rights violations resulting in death, murder for a criminal enterprise and racketeering, kidnapping, drug trafficking resulting in death, and more. The full list of inmates whose sentences were commuted and their convictions is available on the Justice Department’s website.

The three men whose sentences Biden did not commute are Dylann Roof, Bowers, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Roof killed nine African American parishioners at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 17, 2015. A federal jury sentenced him to death January 2017 on hate crimes charges.

Tsarnaev committed the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, 2023. The terrorist attack killed three people and injured over 500 people. A federal jury sentenced him to death May 2014 on charges of using a weapon of mass destruction.

Biden’s predecessor and successor, President Donald Trump, is a strong proponent of capital punishment. He restarted federal executions after over 17 years without any. Under the Trump administration, 13 federal death row inmates were executed at the United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute.

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