Death penalty opponents across the nation are imploring President Joe Biden to commute the death sentences of 40 inmates currently serving on federal Death Row.
More than a dozen groups representing Black clergy, Catholic anti-death-penalty activists, civil rights attorneys, pro-life advocates, business leaders, victims’ families and former corrections officers and prosecutors recently sent separate letters to the president urging him to grant clemency to the prisoners before he leaves office in January.
Commutations would prevent a repeat of the Trump administration’s execution of 13 federal prisoners between July 2020 and January 2021.
The letters press Biden to consider his previously stated opposition to capital punishment along with the moratorium he placed on federal executions in 2021. Full commutations, the groups argued, also would prevent a repeat of the Trump administration’s execution of 13 federal prisoners between July 2020 and January 2021. A commutation does not overturn a guilty verdict but converts a death sentence to a life sentence. It is different than a pardon.
With six Black men among those put to death during that spree, the condemned were emblematic of the racial and social injustices of capital punishment, the Faith Leaders of Color Coalition noted in its letter to the White House.
“Those executed included people with intellectual disabilities, people whose mental illness was so severe they lacked any rational understanding of why they were being killed, people who had long ago redeemed themselves and devoted their lives to helping others, people who were barely older than children at the time of their crime, people whose cases were marked by egregious government misconduct and/or evidence of racial bias, and people whose victims’ family members opposed their execution,” FLOCC said.
As a whole, the letters represent the wide-ranging and bipartisan anti-death penalty sentiment growing across the nation, said Jamila Hodge, CEO of Equal Justice USA.
“The death penalty has for generations been a veiled extension of our national legacy of racial terror and lynchings,” said Hodge, whose organization signed on to the letter with groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The federal death penalty and equivalent systems in 27 states are a massive drain on resources that could otherwise be used to find and expand community-based solutions for the failings of the nation’s criminal legal system, Hodge added. “President Biden, like me a person of deep faith in God, has a historic opportunity to demonstrate mercy and the belief that we are all redeemable, by preventing an execution spree that will not make us safer, while moving us closer to reckoning with a system that unfairly targets Black people.”
More than 20 states have abolished the death penalty since 2024, and another six currently have gubernatorial holds on executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. However, the federal death penalty applies in all U.S. states and territories.
Joia Erin Thornton
FLOCC National Director Joia Thornton underscored Biden’s close relationship with Black faith communities in pleading with the president to spare the lives of federal Death Row inmates. Her organization’s letter was signed by more than 200 Black and indigenous faith leaders from across numerous religious traditions.
“Commuting the federal Death Row would be an incredible milestone for those who believe life has value, mercy is encompassing and grace covers a multitude of sin,” Thornton said.
Commuting the death sentences would produce immediate benefits, the FLOCC letter added. “It would acknowledge and help redress the racial bias built into the federal death penalty system, allow vast government resources to be redirected to policies that actually improve public safety, and allow the families of victims and incarcerated persons to focus on healing instead of living in legal limbo.”
Of the 40 men on federal Death Row, 38% are Black — while African Americans represent only 11.7% of the U.S. population, the ACLU, Amnesty International and 125 other social justice organizations say in their letter to Biden.
“Since 1989, 60% of all people federally sentenced to death have been people of color.”
“There are Black men on federal Death Row today who were sentenced and convicted by all-white juries, despite the offense taking place in areas with significant populations of people of color,” the letter says. “Since 1989, 60% of all people federally sentenced to death have been people of color.”
Business Leaders Against the Death Penalty also asked Biden to consider commutation for the sake of the nation’s character.
“We believe it is our moral imperative to secure a fairer and more equitable world, protect the rule of law and safeguard universal human rights. The death penalty runs counter to these efforts, and it is both inhumane and irreconcilable with human dignity,” their letter says.
The group of 450 global business leaders added clemency would contribute to social cohesion and fairness and make communities safer: “The death penalty does not serve as a deterrent to violent crime. Statistics show that U.S. states with the death penalty have higher murder rates than those without. This is consistent with international findings showing that countries that have abolished capital punishment experienced a decline in murder rates over time.”
More than 150 family members of murder victims also wrote the president to dispel the myth that capital punishment helps bring closure and healing to loved ones.
“For too many of us, the death penalty has only prolonged an already agonizing experience with a lengthy process that leaves us with more pain, despair and isolation,” they say. “The complex, constitutionally mandated legal process causes decades of uncertainty and waiting, which continually resurfaces trauma and delays healing. For all of us, this system completely ignores our very real needs, diverting dollars and attention from the critical services our families desperately need in the wake of violence.”
“We watched in horror as 13 executions were carried out in rapid succession, many just days or even hours apart.”
On top of that, a group of former correctional administrators and professionals said commuting the sentences would spare prison workers the agony that comes with carrying out executions.
“During the final months of the Trump administration, we watched in horror as 13 executions were carried out in rapid succession, many just days or even hours apart. Given the Supreme Court’s actions and inactions that allowed these executions to proceed, we have no doubt that unless you commute all remaining federal death sentences, a future administration will resume this harmful practice,” their letter states. “The federal government owes a duty of care to its hard-working Bureau of Prisons employees not to expose them to such an extreme risk of trauma.”
Commuting sentences of the 40 federal Death Row inmates would be a step toward improving the health and well-being of communities, a group of Latino legal and social justice groups assert in yet another letter to Biden. “The death penalty diverts vast public resources that could be better used to transform law enforcement agencies and to expand access to education, employment and both mental and physical health care.”
The president should also grant clemency simply to keep his word, the groups added. “You campaigned on a promise to end the death penalty at the federal level. Merely stopping executions is not enough to fulfill this important pledge; a future administration can swiftly resume executing federal prisoners. We urge you to use your constitutional authority to commute all 40 federal death sentences now.”
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