Many Biden Death-Penalty Commutations, but No Clemency for ‘Tree of Life’ Shooter

Photo Credit: Official White House photo

Memorials to shooting victims outside the Tree of Life Congregation Synagogue in Pittsburgh, October 30, 2018

(JNS) U.S. President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 federal death row prisoners to life in prison without parole on Monday, saying that he cannot allow the incoming Trump administration to resume executions, which Biden paused when he took office in 2021.

Biden did not commute the sentence of Robert Bowers, who killed 11 Jewish worshippers, most of them elderly, in 2018 at the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha Congregation in Pittsburgh. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber, and Dylann Roof, who killed nine parishioners at a black church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015, will also remain on death row.

“These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,” Biden stated. “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.”

“But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice president and now president, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” he added. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

In July 2021, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a moratorium on federal executions. None have been carried out during Biden’s term.

That stands in contrast to the first Trump administration, which carried out 13 of the 16 executions that the federal government has performed since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the death penalty after a four-year ban.

Biden’s decision on Monday highlights the evolving position he and many other Democrats have taken on the death penalty in recent decades. As a senator, Biden drafted the 1994 crime bill, which greatly expanded the federal death penalty.

“Let me define the liberal wing of the Democratic Party,” Biden said in a speech on the Senate floor on Aug. 24, 1994. “The liberal wing of the Democratic Party is now for 60 new death penalties. That is what is in this bill.”

By 2019, however, Biden was campaigning on abolishing the death penalty.

“Because we can’t ensure that we get these cases right every time, we must eliminate the death penalty,” he wrote on July 25, 2019.

Republicans slammed Biden on Monday for commuting the sentences of mass murderers and rapists and described some of the crimes of the men, who will now serve life without the possibility of parole.

“Kaboni Savage is a gang leader, who’s been convicted for his involvement in the deaths of 12 people,” wrote Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). “Savage ordered the firebombing of the family home of one of his rivals. The attack murdered six, including a 15-month-old baby and three other children.”

“When Savage heard that his rival was being temporarily released from prison to attend his family’s funeral, Savage said, ‘They should stop off and get him some barbecue sauce’ to ‘pour it on them burnt bitches,’” he added. “Biden granted Savage clemency.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) accused Biden of “using his last days in office to spare the worst monsters in America.”

“Once again, Democrats side with depraved criminals over their victims, public order and common decency,” Cotton wrote. “Democrats can’t even defend Biden’s outrageous decision as some kind of principled, across-the-board opposition to the death penalty since he didn’t commute the three most politically toxic cases.”

“Democrats are the party of politically convenient justice,” he added.