WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s decision to commute the sentences of nearly every federal death row inmate to life in prison without the chance for parole has ignited a fierce debate about the morality of executing convicted murderers and what constitutes as justice for the families of their victims.
Biden faced backlash from a spokesman for President-elect Donald Trump, congressional Republicans and a House Democrat who questioned whether the president was overstepping his bounds by usurping the work of courts and juries with his lame duck move on Monday morning to commute the sentences of 37 out of 40 death row prisoners.
The Democratic president also faced criticism from some anti-death penalty activists who said he didn’t go far enough, including a family member of one victim, who said Biden’s commutations should have extended to the other three federal inmates facing the death penalty.
“I need the President to understand that when you put a killer on death row, you also put their victim’s families in limbo with the false promise that we must wait until there is an execution before we can begin to heal,” said the Rev. Sharon Risher, whose mother and two cousins were killed in 2015 at the Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Arguing for the commutation of the convicted shooter Dylann Roof’s death sentence, Risher added: “Politics has gotten in the way of mercy. You can’t rank victims, Mr. President.”
Supporters of Biden’s decision countered that he was showing moral leadership and praised him for making progress on a campaign pledge to end the federal death penalty. In a statement accompanying the news, the president said that he could not in “good conscience” allow the planned executions of the individuals on federal death row to move forward.
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Biden cited his work as a public defender and Trump’s support for the death penalty as guiding factors.
Trump did not comment on the commutations directly, even as he posted about other topics on Monday on his social media platform. A spokesman for Trump criticized Biden on the president-elect’s behalf.
“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,” said Trump communications director Steven Cheung.
Biden had been under pressure from congressional Democrats and anti-death penalty activists prior to Monday’s announcement to commute the sentences of death row inmates before he left office. Pope Francis also pushed Biden, who is Catholic and spoke to the pontiff last week, to prevent the executions.
In all but three cases, Biden obliged. He did not commute the sentences of Robert Bowers, who was convicted for the 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue that left 11 dead in Pittsburgh; Roof, who was convicted in the Mother Emmanuel Church mass shooting where nine people died; or Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured more than 260.
Biden promised as a candidate for president to end the death penalty in 2020 and said in a statement that he did not want the deaths of the roughly three dozen other people weighing on him after he leaves office.
“I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” he said. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
Anti-death penalty advocates quickly offered their support. Some pushed Biden, who also did not commute the death sentences of military members, to do more.
Former GOP U.S. congresswoman and current Ohio state Rep. Jean Schmidt, who witnessed the Boston Marathon bombing, said, “I was initially thrilled that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev received the death penalty. Today I have changed.”
Schmidt said, “I believe he deserves life in prison without parole, and I am disturbed that President Biden has not commuted his death sentence to life without parole.”
Death row spiritual advisor Rev. Jeff Hood was unsparing in his criticism. He also accused Biden of ranking victims.
“We are in the same moral abyss we were in before,” Hood told USA TODAY. “Regardless of how many death sentences President Biden just commuted, by not commuting them all he has made sure the killing will continue.”
Republicans in Congress were also upset with Biden.
“Joe Biden is using his last days in office to spare the worst monsters in America. These killers were sentenced to death by a jury of their peers and then had a lengthy and burdensome appeals process,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
In a separate post, Cotton called for both a congressional and Department of Justice investigation into the legality of the commutations.
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a conservative firebrand, argued that Biden was abusing the president’s pardon power “to carry out a miscarriage of justice.”
“The rule of law depends on our faith in it. @JoeBiden isn’t the only problem… it’s the radical leftists destroying the rule of law. This is ending,” Roy wrote on X.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the criticism.
Praise for Biden’s commutations mainly fell along party lines on Capitol Hill.
“By taking this historic action, President Biden is demonstrating the type of moral leadership this moment demands,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., said in a statement. Pressley advocated for Biden to commute federal death sentences in a press conference earlier this month.
“The President’s decision today provides accountability with a term of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and ensures that these individuals never again pose a threat to public safety, but without implicating the myriad issues associated with capital punishment,” added Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
Biden didn’t win over every Democrat. Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., disagreed with his party’s president in a CNN interview, arguing the outgoing administration was setting a negative precedent by “overturning cases that have been decided by courts.”
“I understand the concerns and threats of a Trump administration going forward on these, but I think the baseline is, I think you commute sentences or pardon people when you think justice was not done in those cases,” Quigley said, adding: “No one is above the law.”
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