Biden commutes almost all federal death sentences

US President Joe Biden on Monday commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 inmates on federal death row, ahead of the return to power of Donald Trump, who has indicated that he would restart federal executions.

Three men were excluded from the move: one of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombers, a gunman who murdered 11 Jewish worshippers in 2018 and a white supremacist who killed nine Black churchgoers in 2015.

Democrat Biden had imposed a moratorium on the federal death penalty but was under pressure to act further before leaving the White House on January 20, amid signals from Republican Trump that he would resume the practice.

Those who had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole included nine people convicted of murdering fellow prisoners, four for murders committed during bank robberies and one who killed a prison guard.

"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," Biden said in a statement.

"But guided by my conscience and my experience... I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted."

Trump's team blasted the "abhorrent" decision.

"These are among the worst killers in the world and this abhorrent decision by Joe Biden is a slap in the face to the victims, their families, and their loved ones," Trump communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson also said the decision was a "slap in the face to the families who have suffered immeasurably at the hands of these animals."

Trump ended a 17-year pause in federal executions in 2020, during his first term in office. There were 13 executions by lethal injection during his final six months in power, more than under any US leader in 120 years.

Rights groups hailed Biden's commutations.

"President Biden has taken the most consequential step of any president in our history to address the immoral and unconstitutional harms of capital punishment," Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said in a statement.

'Historic day'

Activist Martin Luther King III, son of the slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., said it was a "historic day."

The three remaining federal death row inmates were all convicted of terrorism or hate crimes.

They are Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who helped carry out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who in 2015 shot and killed nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 Jews at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue in 2018.

Biden campaigned for the White House as a death penalty opponent.

Trump, however, frequently spoke on the campaign trail about expanding the use of capital punishment to include migrants who kill US citizens as well as drug and human traffickers.

The death penalty is normally carried out at state level in the United States but the federal government can also seek execution for a limited set of crimes, including terrorism and killings of judicial officials.

The last federal execution -- carried out by lethal injection in Terre Haute, Indiana -- occurred on January 16, 2021, four days before Trump left office.

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states, while six others have moratoriums in place. In 2024, there have been 25 executions in the United States, all at the state level.

Despite global trends towards moratoriums or abolition of the death penalty, total known executions increased for the third consecutive year in 2024, led by Iran, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The United States ranked fifth on the list of global executions in 2024, according to the center's data.

Biden has been following a tradition of outgoing presidents who issue clemency before leaving office.

Earlier this month, he commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people who had been placed on home confinement during the Covid-19 pandemic, the most ever in a single day, and pardoned 39 people for "non-violent" offenses.

Biden caused controversy by pardoning his troubled son Hunter, who faced sentencing on gun and tax charges, despite previously promising not to do so.