Washington, D.C. (WDNews) — President Joe Biden announced Monday the commutation of sentences for 37 of the 40 federal death row inmates, reducing their punishments to life imprisonment. The decision comes just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump, a vocal supporter of capital punishment, is set to take office.
The commutations spare individuals convicted of various killings, including the deaths of police and military officers, crimes on federal land, and fatalities linked to bank robberies, drug deals, and federal prison violence.
Only three federal inmates remain sentenced to death: Dylann Roof, responsible for the 2015 racially motivated killings of nine Black worshippers at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.; Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people in the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
