According to a recent report, President Biden is contemplating the possibility of commuting the death sentences of nearly all of the 40 men who are presently on federal death row for murder.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Attorney General Merrick Garland has advised President Biden to convert the sentences of nearly 40 cases from death penalty to life imprisonment. This recommendation aligns with President Biden’s opposition to capital punishment, except for a few exceptional cases.
The Journal did not disclose the specific prisoners that Garland advised Biden against sparing. However, potential candidates may include Robert Bowers, who carried out a heinous shooting in 2018 at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, claiming the lives of 11 individuals. Another possible candidate is Dylann Roof, responsible for a racially motivated attack in 2015 at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC, where he mercilessly took the lives of nine black parishioners.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber who, along with his deceased brother, caused the deaths of three people and injured hundreds in 2013, is currently awaiting execution on federal death row.
The White House informed the Journal that a final decision has not been made, and typically, advisories from the attorney general serve as a means for presidents to justify their controversial actions.
The impact of the clemency on pending cases, including the federal prosecutors’ request for a death sentence in the upcoming trial of Payton Gendron, remains uncertain. Gendron is responsible for the tragic mass shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, NY in 2022, where he allegedly targeted and killed 10 individuals out of a motive rooted in anti-black racism.
In a series of controversial actions, Biden has granted numerous pardons and commutations this month. It all started with a blanket pardon for his own son, Hunter Biden, aged 54, on December 1. Hunter Biden had been convicted in June for three federal gun felonies and had also pleaded guilty in September to tax fraud amounting to $1.4 million, which stemmed from his involvement in foreign business dealings where he frequently included his father.
On December 12, Biden granted clemency to almost 1,500 individuals who had been granted temporary release from prison due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The mass reprieve sparked criticism when it was discovered that among those pardoned were Josephine Gray, known as the “Black Widow,” who had killed two of her ex-husbands and another lover, and Rita Crundwell, the former comptroller of Dixon, Ill., who had been convicted of embezzling almost $54 million from the small town of 15,000 residents over a period of twenty years.
