Activists pressure Biden to act as Trump vows to ‘vigorously’ enforce death penalty

Anti-death penalty organizations in the United States received an unexpected and unprecedented gift from the president on Monday, just in time for Christmas. In one of his final acts as U.S. president, Joe Biden announced the commutation of the death sentences for 37 of the 40 prisoners convicted of federal crimes. These individuals, found guilty of murders committed between 1993 and 2019, will now serve life sentences without the possibility of parole (LWOPP). In other words, they will spend the remainder of their lives in prison but will no longer face execution — a fate that seemed likely with Donald Trump’s arrival in the Oval Office. During his campaign, Trump vowed to expedite federal executions and expand the death penalty to include drug traffickers, human traffickers, and perpetrators of child abuse.

The abolitionist movement, however, continues to advocate for clemency for the three inmates whose sentences were not commuted due to the severity of their crimes. These individuals are Robert D. Bowers, 52, who murdered 11 members of a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 31, one of the two brothers responsible for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people; and Dylann Roof, 30, a white supremacist who fatally shot nine members of an African-American church in South Carolina in 2015.

Reverend Sharon Risher, whose mother and two cousins were killed by Roof, criticized Biden for not sparing Roof. “I need the president to understand that when you put a killer on death row, you also put their victims’ families in limbo with the false promise that we must wait until there is an execution before we can begin to heal,” Risher said in a statement.

In addition to the three cases, abolitionists are now focusing their efforts on urging President Biden to address “the four condemned men on military death row,” according to Abe Bonowitz, co-director of Death Penalty Action and a leading voice in the movement. In an email interview on Wednesday, Bonowitz explained: “We oppose capital punishment in all cases because it is a failed public policy from any point of view.” Beyond federal convictions, there are an estimated 2,180 inmates awaiting execution across 27 of the 50 states where the death penalty is legal.

Bonowitz, who had been campaigning for months to push Biden toward granting clemency in anticipation of a potential Trump electoral victory, is calling on the president not give his successor “the ability to execute anyone,” describing Trump as someone who “idolizes dictators and revels in that kind of power.” On Tuesday, the president-elect said he would “vigorously pursue the death penalty.”

At the conclusion of his first term, Trump ordered the execution of 13 inmates at Terre Haute prison in Indiana, the site of the federal death row. This marked a significant departure from modern precedent; since 1976, only George W. Bush (2001–2009) had carried out federal executions, and even then, just three in total.

The death penalty features prominently in the sweeping Project 2025, a detailed roadmap authored by approximately 400 conservative experts, outlining the priorities for a potential second Trump administration. While Trump attempted to distance himself from the document’s proposals during his campaign, ample evidence underscores his ideological and practical alignment with the project. On page 554, it explicitly calls for federal authorities to “do everything possible to obtain finality for the 44 prisoners currently on federal death row.”

Several abolitionist activists consulted this week expressed disappointment with President Biden’s decision to commute death sentences to life in prison without the possibility of review. These activists describe LWOPP as a “sentence to die by imprisonment.” Currently, an estimated 5,000 individuals serve such sentences in U.S. prisons, where the penal system prioritizes punishment over rehabilitation.

For death row inmates who maintain their innocence, commutation to life imprisonment without parole is not a welcome outcome. The death penalty process, though arduous and harrowing, allows for years — often decades — of case reviews across various judicial levels, sometimes culminating in appeals to the Supreme Court. This process offers a slim but critical avenue for exoneration, one that LWOPP eliminates entirely.

Exoneration

A striking demonstration of why second chances matter came last June, when the United States set a grim milestone with the pardon of Larry Roberts. Roberts had been on death row for the 1983 stabbing murders of another inmate and a California prison guard — crimes he was ultimately proven not to have committed. His pardon marked the 200th exoneration of a death row inmate since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1972. Since that controversial ruling, at least 1,605 executions have been carried out in the U.S., making it an outlier among Western nations.

Among the 37 death row inmates on Biden’s commutation list are individuals sentenced for drug-trafficking-related deaths, nine convicted of killing other inmates, a Marine accused of murdering a fellow soldier, and people convicted of murders committed on federal property. According to Bonowitz, the list also includes “several [prisoners] with credible claims of innocence, including Billie Allen.”

Allen was accused of participating, alongside Norris Holder — another prisoner whose sentence was commuted — in a St. Louis (Missouri) bank robbery during which a guard was fatally shot. Holder, who reportedly masterminded the robbery to raise funds for a prosthetic leg after losing his in a train accident. Amnesty International has collected 100,000 signatures urging Biden to commute Allen’s sentence for a crime he maintains he did not commit. “His case raises serious concerns about racial bias, his young age at the time [he was 18 years old], and a lack of evidence linking him to the crime,” the organization argues.

This week’s decision, driven by pressure from civil rights organizations and various religious leaders, including Pope Francis, marks a notable evolution in Biden’s stance on capital punishment. As Biden prepares to conclude more than half a century in Washington politics this January, his position has undergone a significant transformation. For much of his career, he was a staunch advocate of the death penalty, even signing legislation that expanded its application.

A resurfaced video from 1994 shows Biden in the Senate energetically championing a tough-on-crime approach and identifying himself as a death penalty proponent. However, by 2020, Biden campaigned on the promise to abolish capital punishment during his presidency. While he did not deliver on that pledge, he did direct the Department of Justice to implement a moratorium on federal executions.

In 2024, 25 prisoners were executed across the United States, a slight increase from the 24 executions in 2023. This marks the tenth consecutive year with fewer than 30 executions — a stark contrast to the peak of capital punishment at the turn of the century. The record high was set in 1999, with 98 executions. Despite this overall decline, Bonowitz highlights a “worrying trend,” noting that “states have resumed executions for prisoners who have exhausted all their appeals.” Indiana, for example, carried out its first execution in 15 years this month.

States are also experimenting with new and revived methods of execution. Alabama has introduced nitrogen asphyxiation, while others, like South Carolina, have reinstated the firing squad in response to difficulties in obtaining the drugs required for lethal injection. The electric chair, largely abandoned in the 1990s for humanitarian reasons, remains an option in seven states.

“There is still much work to be done, even though public opinion on the death penalty is at an all-time low,” says Bonowitz. According to Gallup, public support for capital punishment has fallen to 53% — the lowest level in five decades. Among Americans aged 18 to 43, opposition to the death penalty now exceeds support. This marks a significant shift from 1994, when 80% of Americans supported capital punishment.

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