Religious Groups, Former Corrections Officials, Pro-life Voices, and Many Others Urge President Biden to Commute Federal Death Sentences

In let­ters released on December 9, 2024, hun­dreds of stake­hold­ers urged President Joe Biden (pic­tured) to com­mute all fed­er­al death sen­tences before his term ends, cit­ing racial bias, sys­temic arbi­trari­ness, and the fail­ure of the fed­er­al death penal­ty to enhance pub­lic safe­ty. This col­lec­tive request reflects broad, bipar­ti­san acknowl­edge­ment of the flaws in the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem and aligns with the nation­al down­ward trend of sup­port for the death penal­ty, now at his­toric lows. 40 men remain on fed­er­al death row. Any grant of clemen­cy would result in new sen­tences of life in prison with­out parole for these individuals.

More than 200 Black and indige­nous faith lead­ers in the Faith Leaders of Color Coalition (FLOCC) told President Biden that fed­er­al com­mu­ta­tion ​“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.” Catholic Mobilizing Network (CMN), a nation­al orga­ni­za­tion engaged with more than 30,000 Catholics across the US to end the death penal­ty, asked President Biden to bring ​“an end to every form of death penalty…in the spir­it of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.” Echoing these sen­ti­ments, on December 8, Pope Francis pub­licly prayed that these death sen­tences be com­mut­ed, ask­ing the faith­ful to ​“pray for the inmates on death row in the United States…that their sen­tences may be com­mut­ed or changed.”

A group of 29 retired cor­rec­tion­al pro­fes­sion­als also joined in the effort to urge President Biden to com­mute the fed­er­al row, cit­ing the harm exe­cu­tions pose to cor­rec­tions staff. Applauding President Biden’s oppo­si­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the group said they ​“know first-hand the dev­as­tat­ing toll exe­cu­tions take, not only on cor­rec­tion­al pro­fes­sion­als direct­ly involved in the process but on their fam­i­lies and on the larg­er cor­rec­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.” Clearing fed­er­al death row would allow the Bureau of Prisons to move towards ​“impor­tant pol­i­cy goals” and ​“would free mil­lions of fed­er­al dol­lars for oth­er pri­or­i­ties, includ­ing improv­ing safe­ty for cor­rec­tion­al staff through train­ing and infrastructure improvements.” 

Pro-life advo­cates, stress­ing their com­mit­ment to this val­ue from con­cep­tion to nat­ur­al death, told President Biden that ​“human life, no mat­ter the cir­cum­stances, is wor­thy of pro­tec­tion. There is no amount of judi­cial process that can over­come the truth that the death penal­ty is the pur­pose­ful tak­ing of a human being’s life.”

During his 2020 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, President Biden said he would work to elim­i­nate the fed­er­al death penal­ty. During President Biden’s tenure, the Department of Justice paused exe­cu­tions, but con­tin­ued to defend exist­ing death sen­tences and autho­rized one new cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion. The let­ters urge President Biden to go beyond the mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions and ful­fill his cam­paign promise to end the fed­er­al death penal­ty. Biden made this promise in the wake of the exe­cu­tions car­ried out dur­ing the last sev­en months of President Trump’s first term, when the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment exe­cut­ed 12 men and one woman in the midst of a glob­al pan­dem­ic and despite seri­ous con­cerns sur­round­ing intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, men­tal incom­pe­ten­cy, racial bias, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, and more.