Activists Call on Biden to Clear Death Row Before Trump Takes Office

[Coventina]

A group of human rights activists, former corrections officials and families of crime victims asked President Biden on Monday to use his clemency power to take all 40 inmates off federal death row before he hands over power to President-elect Donald J. Trump.

In a series of open letters, the group noted that Mr. Biden campaigned on opposing capital punishment. Mr. Trump supports the death penalty and restarted federal executions after a nearly 20-year pause during his first term.

“As your time in office comes to a close, there is an unprecedented need for you to cement your commitment to remedying injustices by exercising executive clemency and commuting the death sentences of those on federal death row,” one of the letters said.

The letters on Monday aligned with a larger effort by congressional Democrats and others to persuade Mr. Biden to use his clemency power to commute death sentences to life sentences without parole and to free people serving disproportionally long drug sentences.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/us/politics/biden-death-row-clemency-pardons.html

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I support this 100%

[harumph]

1. I think that with the exception of the most egregious crimes...the death penalty should be at least commuted to life.

I'm not 100% opposed to it (DP), but close. I agree that he should act on this b/c clearly Trump is bloodthirsty as are his supporters.

[Silent Type]

2. I'm assumng he can commute death penalty without releasing them. But don't know.

[Just_Vote_Dem]

3. Yeah, the way the NYT phrased that headline was not the best choice of words also n/t

[Renew Deal]

4. Remedying injustices? Are all 40 people innocent?

[jmowreader]

7. Most of them are guilty as hell, if not all of them

Commutation would turn their death sentences into Life Without Parole sentences.

[ForgedCrank]

5. So now

murder is bad?
I can't keep up.

[ForgedCrank]

6. You know,

my last response was unfair and uncalled for. I don't want to edit it away because I deserve what I get for saying it.
I automatically assumed you would be one of those trying to justify the murder of the insurance CEO. That wasn't fair, and it wasn't right.
My apologies.

[yagotme]

9. I'm getting confused at times, too.

On one hand, we don't want people in jail, on the other hand, certain "recent" trials have a few members BEGGING for jail time for a person that has been acquitted. Makes my head hurt, sometimes...

[Mountainguy]

8. Why?

I have no desire to see Biden commute the sentences of Dylann Roof, DZhokhar, or Tsarnaev, Robert Bowers. The world will be a better place when they are all dead.

Jorge Avila-Torrez raped and murders at least 3 people, including two girls under 10 year old.

Timothy Hennis raped and murdered a woman, then murdered two of her daughters, 5 and 3, by stabbing and beating them to death.

Len Davis was a cop who called a hit on a mother of three who filed a complaint against him to a beating she witnessed.

A number of others were already in prison when they committed the crimes that landed them on death row, so no, keeping them locked up for life does not take away the danger they pose.

[alarimer]

10. Defintinitely commute the sentences of all of them.

Life without parole. Because you know Trump is going on a killing spree.

The death penalty is barbaric.

[question everything]

11. Especially after the future White House Occupant left with a blood bath

https://www.yahoo.com/news/everyone-richard-branson-pope-wants-193234582.html

The ACLU and other groups remember well the final months of Trump’s first term in office. His administration, led by Attorney General Bill Barr, executed 13 people in 2020 after resuming the practice for the first time since the early 2000s. Five of those people were killed during the post-election transition period.

It was a spree of executions the likes of which the US federal government had not carried out in decades. Activists now fret that a decision not to commute the remainder of the federal death row in 2024 and the first half of January would mean another failure by Democrats to “Trump-proof” the justice system before the onset of the new administration.