Despite calling for the land to end all deaths, President Joe Biden left three people on national death row.
On Monday, Biden announced the transmission of 37 out of 40 residents on national suicide column, with less than a quarter left in office. The three left on death row were those concerned for murders: Dylann Roof, 30, murdered nine black congregation in Charleston in 2015, Robert Bowers, 52, murdered 11 Israeli congregation at the Tree of Life Synagogue, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 31, one of the boys behind the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and injured thousands more.
He reiterated his position on Monday in a statement.
” I am more than ever persuaded that the death penalty should be abolished at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted”, Biden said.
He added that the commutations are “in line with the moratorium my Administration has placed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”
From left-wing organizations within the Democratic Party to Pope Francis, who Biden spoke with last week, Biden has been under pressure from a number of sources to commute the sentences. During his presidential campaign, the president had vowed to end the federal death penalty, but he only put a moratorium on further executions.
In his first term, President-elect Donald Trump supervised the execution of 13 death row inmates. He opposed the traditional approach to the death penalty. In his second administration, he has pledged to expand the death penalty for more crimes.
Trump and allies have argued that Democrats ‘ approach to the death penalty reflects a soft-on-crime philosophy and that the decision to commute the sentences is likely to wreak havoc with them.
Biden’s commutation will not affect the vast majority of death row inmates, as thousands are in state death row all over the country.
Among those whose sentences were commuted by Biden were Brandon Basham, 43, and , Chadrick Fulks, 47, who kidnapped, raped, and murdered two women after escaping prison. Thomas Sanders, 57, murdered a mother in front of her 12-year-old daughter, kidnapped her, then murdered her four days later.
WASHINGTON EXAMINER CLICK HERE TO READ MORE.
Others were convicted of murdering several people — Kaboni Savage, 49, murdered 12 people in connection with a drug enterprise, including an infant and three other children, after he ordered their apartment to be firebombed. He was later caught making fun of their deaths.
Two serial killers, Jurijus Kadamovas, 58, and Iouri Mikhel, 59, who kidnapped and murdered five people, also had their sentences commuted. Jorge Torrez, 36, was convicted of kidnapping, sexually assaulting, and murdering an 8-year-old and 9-year-old girl, raping another woman, and murdering a female naval officer.
