Watch: Biden urged to commute federal death-penalty sentences before he leaves office

A coalition of federal and state prosecutors, judges, religious leaders and law enforcement officials on Monday urged President Biden to commute the sentences of dozens of federal death row inmates before President-elect Donald Trump, who strongly supports capital punishment, takes office next month.

The advocates submitted letters asking Mr. Biden to commute all federal death sentences to life without parole. They said execution is barbaric, racially biased, immoral and outdated.

“The federal death penalty represents a profound failure of our justice system, riddled with inequities and errors that undermine its legitimacy. By commuting the sentences of those on federal death row, President Biden can take decisive action to prevent this deeply flawed system from inflicting further harm,” said Bryan Porter, commonwealth’s attorney for Alexandria, Virginia.

Forty people are on federal death row. They include Dylann Roof, who fatally shot nine Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston Marathon bomber; and Robert Gregory Bowers, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter.

Less-prominent cases include the man convicted of the 2003 murder of a postal worker and another convicted in 2019 of killing two bank employees during a robbery.

The vast majority of condemned inmates are held on states’ death rows, not in federal prisons. As of Oct. 1, the U.S. had a total of 2,180 death row inmates, according to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Death penalty opponents say Mr. Biden must take action before he leaves office. They fear Mr. Trump will resume federal executions when he returns to the White House.

During the last six months of Mr. Trump’s first term, a record 13 federal inmates were executed. Before Mr. Trump resumed executions, the federal government had not put anyone to death in 17 years.

The last federal inmate to be executed was Dustin John Higgs on Jan. 16, 2021, four days before Mr. Biden’s inauguration. He was executed for the 1996 murders of three women on federal land in Maryland.

The first Trump administration approved the use of pentobarbital in lethal injections over the objections of death penalty opponents who said it causes pain before death.

“The president-elect has a sordid history of executions and has stated his intention to expand and expedite them when he returns to office, making this an urgent national moment,” said Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, Catholic Mobilizing Network executive director. “The clock is ticking for 40 lives. President Biden should exercise his constitutional authority now to offer clemency to each person on federal death row.”

It’s unclear whether Mr. Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Pam Bondi, would quickly resume federal executions. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Trump cannot reverse Mr. Biden’s commuted sentences of federal death row inmates but has vowed to end the moratorium on executions.

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates declined to respond to the letters and referred to comments from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre last week.

“The president is reviewing other pardons and commutations,” Ms. Jean-Pierre told reporters. “Certainly, there will be more to come. I’m not going to get into deliberations, private deliberations.”

Mr. Porter is one of 38 federal prosecutors and justice leaders brought together by Fair and Just Prosecution, which opposes the death penalty. The Catholic Mobilizing Network also called on Mr. Biden to empty the federal death row before he leaves office.

Other organizations that authored letters to Mr. Biden include a coalition of 200 Black faith leaders, a group of 29 retired corrections officers, the American Civil Liberties Union Legal Defense Fund, Amnesty International, the Catholic Mobilizing Network and 12 Hispanic advocacy organizations.

Another letter was authored by 100 business leaders, including Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, former Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris, and former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg. 

A group of 166 family members of homicide victims sent a letter saying the death penalty has not dulled their pain. “It divides families when we need each other the most,” they said. 

In its letter, the Catholic Mobilizing Network said Mr. Biden should “act in the spirit of mercy and the kind of justice that upholds the dignity of all life.” The organization invoked Mr. Biden’s Catholic faith as a reason he should commute federal death sentences.

“As Catholics, we understand that every person is made in the image of God and that our Heavenly Father does not shut the door on anyone,” said Ms. Vaillancourt Murphy.

During Mr. Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, he pledged to eliminate the federal death penalty and commute the sentences of death row inmates to life without probation or parole. In one of his first actions, Mr. Biden ordered a moratorium on federal executions but has not done anything to eliminate the death penalty.

The Justice Department has argued for the death penalty in a few cases, including for a White supremacist who killed 10 Black people at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in 2022 and the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter who killed 11 people in 2018.

Liberal activists and death penalty opponents have criticized Mr. Biden for not fulfilling his campaign promise more aggressively.

Mr. Biden has granted pardons or sentence commutations to only 1.3% of those who have applied, the lowest of any president in the past 50 years.

Mr. Biden ignited a political firestorm by issuing a sweeping pardon to his son Hunter Biden, who was convicted on gun charges in Delaware and pleaded guilty to tax evasion. The pardon protects Hunter Biden from being criminally charged for any offense he may have committed from January 2014 through December 2024.

Some Democrats and many Republicans have blasted the decision and complained that the president pardoned only Hunter Biden rather than including those convicted of low-level drug offenses and commuting death penalty sentences.

Mr. Biden is considering preemptive pardons for former Rep. Liz Cheney and Dr. Anthony Fauci.