Baku, December 23, AZERTAC

President Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of nearly all prisoners on federal death row, sparing the lives of 37 men just a month before Donald J. Trump will return to the Oval Office with a promise to restart federal executions, according to The New York Times.

Those affected by Mr. Biden’s action, all of whom were convicted of murder, will serve life imprisonment without the possibility of parole instead of facing execution. Only three men, who each carried out notorious mass killings, will remain on federal death row.

The president campaigned in 2020 on ending the federal death penalty. Although proposed legislation to that effect failed to advance in Congress during his administration, Mr. Biden directed the Justice Department to issue a moratorium on federal executions. Thirteen prisoners on federal death row were put to death during Mr. Trump’s first term.

“I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” Mr. Biden said in a statement on Monday. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

Mr. Biden said the commutations were consistent with the standard he has imposed for halting executions “in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”

“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,” Mr. Biden said.

The White House released statements of support from faith leaders, civil rights groups and law enforcement officials, as well as from friends and family members of those killed by men on death row.

“Putting to death the person who killed my police partner and best friend would have brought me no peace,” said Donnie Oliverio, a retired police officer, who alluded to Mr. Biden’s being Catholic. “The president has done what is right here, and what is consistent with the faith he and I share.” His partner, Bryan S. Hurst, was shot and killed while on duty by Daryl Lawrence during an attempted bank robbery in Columbus, Ohio. Mr. Lawrence was sentenced to death in 2006.

Of the 37 men whose sentences were commuted, 15 are white, 15 are Black, six are Latino and one is Asian. They were sentenced in 16 states, including three that have abolished the death penalty. Nine are on death row because they were convicted of killing fellow federal prisoners.

The three men who can still face federal execution are Robert D. Bowers, 52, who in 2018 gunned down 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh; Dylann Roof, 30, the white supremacist who in 2015 opened fire on Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, S.C., killing nine people; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 31, one of the two brothers who carried out the bombing of the Boston Marathon in 2013 that killed three and maimed more than a dozen others.

A number of groups had called on the president to commute the sentences of the men on death row, including members of his party and several civil rights organizations. Mr. Biden also had a phone call with Pope Francis last week, who prayed this month that federal inmates facing execution would have their sentences commuted. In an article about the call, the Vatican’s news agency reported that the pope had “concern for those on death row.” Catholic Bishops in the United States had also called for the death sentences to be commuted.

Mr. Trump supports the death penalty, and during his 2024 presidential campaign he called for an expansion, suggesting that “drug dealers and human traffickers” and child sex abusers should be put to death. During his first term, Mr. Trump restarted federal executions after a nearly 20-year pause; all 13 were carried out in the final six months of his administration. He has not said how he will expand the death penalty to new federal crimes.