On his way out the door, lame-duck President Joe Biden is considering plans to commute the sentences of dozens of federal inmates currently on death row.
The plan under consideration involves commuting the sentences of most, if not all, of the 40 men on the federal government’s death row.
The move was revealed in a report from Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the matter.
The report notes that the move would frustrate President Donald Trump’s plan to streamline executions as he takes office in January.
The outlet’s sources said Attorney General Merrick Garland, who oversees federal prisons, recommended that Biden commute all but a handful of egregious sentences.
The outlet reported that possible exceptions could include:
• Dzhokhar Tsarnaev: the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber who killed three and wounded more than 250.
• Robert Bowers: who killed 11 people in the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.
• Dylann Roof: who in 2015 killed nine at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Those who could see their death sentences commuted to life in prison include an ex-Marine who killed two young girls and later a female naval officer, a Las Vegas man convicted of kidnapping and killing a 12-year-old girl, a Chicago podiatrist who fatally shot a patient to keep her from testifying in a Medicare fraud investigation and two men convicted in a kidnapping-for-ransom scheme that resulted in the killings of five Russian and Georgian immigrants.
The move came after Biden, an alleged lifelong Catholic, spoke with Pope Francis Thursday.
In his weekly prayer, Francis asked for the commutation of America’s condemned inmates.
The WSJ’s sources said a decision from the president could come by Christmas.
The outlet noted that the biggest question is the scope of the commutation of the death row inmates.
Biden is the first president to openly oppose capital punishment.
His 2020 campaign website declared he would “work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example.”
In January 2021, Biden initially considered an executive order, sources familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.
However, the White House did not issue one.
Six months into the administration, AG Garland announced a moratorium on federal capital punishment to study it further.
The narrow action has meant there have been no federal executions under Biden.
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