President Joe Biden is contemplating the possibility of commuting the death sentences of the majority, if not all, of the 40 men currently on federal death row for murder, as reported in a recent article.
Among these 40 individuals are several infamous killers, including five men who took the lives of children, nine who murdered fellow prisoners, and one who killed a prison guard with a hammer while serving a life sentence for the rape and murder of his wife, a U.S. Marine.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has advised President Biden, who opposes the death penalty, to reduce the sentences of all but a few of the 40 individuals to life in prison, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal on Friday.
The Wall Street Journal did not specify which individuals Garland suggested Biden should not grant clemency, but some of the names might include Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people in 2018 at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, and Dylann Roof, who murdered nine black churchgoers in a racially motivated 2015 attack at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
The notorious Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who, alongside his late brother, killed three people and injured hundreds in the 2013 bombing, is also currently on federal death row.
Recommendations from the attorney general often provide a degree of cover for presidents when making controversial decisions, and the White House informed the Journal that no final decision has been made yet.
It remains unclear how such a clemency move might affect ongoing cases, including the federal prosecution’s request for the death penalty in the upcoming trial of Payton Gendron, who is accused of murdering 10 people in a 2022 racist mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York grocery store.
The list of prisoners on federal death row includes Kaboni Savage, a Philadelphia drug kingpin convicted of ordering the deaths of 12 people, including four children, and Thomas Sanders, who in 2010 kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old Lexis Roberts, stabbing her and slashing her throat after killing her mother.
Other inmates include Iouri Mikhel, convicted of murdering five immigrants from Russia and Georgia after kidnapping them for ransom, and Jorge Avila-Torrez, who murdered two girls in 2005 and a naval officer four years later.
This month, President Biden has made a series of controversial pardons and commutations, beginning with a blanket pardon for his son, Hunter Biden, on December 1. Hunter Biden, 54, had been convicted in June on three federal gun charges and later pleaded guilty to $1.4 million in tax fraud stemming from foreign business dealings in which he allegedly involved his father.
On December 12, Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 individuals who had been temporarily released during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This sweeping act of clemency drew criticism, especially after it was revealed that the list included Josephine Gray, known as the “Black Widow,” who murdered two ex-husbands and a lover, and Rita Crundwell, the former comptroller of Dixon, Illinois, who embezzled nearly $54 million from the town over two decades.