Next month, Biden, a practicing Catholic, will meet with Pope Francis, who recently called for prayers for U.S. death row inmates in hopes their sentences would be commuted.
President Joe Biden announced Monday that he is commuting the death sentences of 37 inmates, leaving only three people on death row in federal prisons.
The commuted sentences will be reclassified to life sentences without the possibility of parole, according to the White House.
"These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder," Biden said in a statement. "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.
“But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” Biden added in his statement. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
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The three men who remain on federal death row are Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people in the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018; Dylann Roof, who killed nine people in a shooting at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers in 2013.
As a presidential candidate, Biden argued in 2019 that "we must eliminate the death penalty."
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In 2021, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a moratorium on federal executions. No federal inmates have been executed during Biden's presidency.
However, the Justice Department said this year that it would seek the death penalty for the white supremacist who killed 10 Black people in a shooting at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store in 2022.
Beyond federal death sentences, about half of states allow the death penalty. More than two dozen people have been executed this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Around 2,200 people are on death row across the country.
One of the inmates whose sentences Biden will commute, Billie Allen, has maintained his innocence.
"I want to believe that he's going to do the right thing," Allen said about Biden in an interview last month, adding, "As someone who's innocent, he should do the right thing sooner instead of later."
Allen said he felt his hope was "cut off" when Donald Trump won the presidential election last month. He wrote his last will and testament, explaining that he had to "prepare for the worst."
Around the time of Trump's election, some of the correctional staff members taunted inmates at the prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, according to a death row inmate and two federal defenders. Execution rehearsals have also increased at the prison, where almost all federal death row inmates are incarcerated, in the lead-up to Trump's inauguration, according to the same sources.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump said on the campaign trail that he would push for the Justice Department to seek the death penalty for drug dealers.
"We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts," Trump said when he launched his 2024 campaign.
He has also called for the death penalty for "any migrant who kills an American citizen or a law enforcement officer."
Thirteen federal prisoners were put to death during Trump's first term — all in the last six months he was in office. Before that, the most recent federal execution was in 2003.
Kelley Henry is a federal defender for Rejon Taylor, one of the inmates being taken off of death row by Biden's action. Henry previously represented Lisa Montgomery, who was executed in the final days of the first Trump administration. She said the rapid pace of federal executions at the end of the Trump administration was "brutal."
"It was like the legal system was suspended, is the best way I can put it," she said in an interview last month.
Reached for comment about use of the death penalty during the end of Trump's last term and his plans for his next term, Trump transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said he will stick with his campaign vows.
"President Trump meant what he said on the campaign trail: he will enforce the death penalty for drug dealers who knowingly sell deadly poison to their fellow Americans, and illegal immigrant criminals who kill innocent American citizens," she said in a statement. "He will deliver on these promises."
Trump would need congressional support to expand the types of crimes for which prosecutors could seek the death penalty, and any changes would be likely to face legal challenges.
Biden this month commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 nonviolent offenders and pardoned an additional 39 people, saying in a statement that "America was built on the promise of possibility and second chances."
Biden also pardoned his son Hunter Biden, who was set to be sentenced on a federal gun charges conviction, as well as a separate case in which he pleaded guilty to federal tax evasion charges. The president had previously said he would not pardon his son.
NBC News has reported that Biden is considering issuing pre-emptive pardons for people who he thinks Trump might legally target during his second administration.
Megan Lebowitz and Sarah Dean reported from Washington and Abigail Brooks from New York City.
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