A Chicago podiatrist convicted in the 2002 shooting of a church worker had his federal death sentence commuted by President Joe Biden.
Ronald Mikos, 76, is housed in the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind. Mikos was one of 37 people who had their death sentences commuted. None of the 37 will be eligible for parole.
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The action comes on the heels of the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history on Dec. 12 when Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and issued 39 pardons.
The president also earlier pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, who was convicted on federal gun charges and pleaded guilty to federal tax charges.
While pardons and commutations are forms of clemency, a commutation shortens a sentence while a pardon provides complete forgiveness.
Under Biden in 2021, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered a moratorium on federal executions to allow for a federal review of death penalty policy.
“In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted,” Biden said in a statement, referring to President-elect Donald Trump, a supporter of expanding capital punishment.
In July 2020, the Trump Administration ended a 17-year hiatus on federal executions when it executed Daniel Lewis Lee. Six more executions followed a little over two months.
Mikos was convicted in 2005 of fatally shooting Joyce Brannon, a 57-year-old nurse turned church secretary.
Brannon was a patient of Mikos’. In 2002, Mikos was under a federal grand jury investigation for Medicare fraud, specifically for inflating bills for surgeries he had not performed.
Brannon, who refused to go along with Mikos’ scheme had been scheduled to testify before the grand jury on Jan. 31, 2002, but was murdered four days before.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Springfield, commended Biden for his “justice and mercy.” Durbin has long advocated for the abolition of the federal death penalty.
Three men remain on federal death row: Robert Bowers, convicted in the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh that left 11 worshippers dead; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted in the Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured more than 260 people in 2013 and Dylann Roof, convicted of fatally shooting nine people at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788; sspearie@sj-r.com; X, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.
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