About those commutations of sentence, President Biden said in a statement :
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. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.
Although the President’s decision was met with conflicting emotions, a Gallup poll revealed that Americans increasingly prefer life imprisonment without parole over capital punishment for serious crimes. The survey found that 60% of respondents supported life sentences without the possibility of parole, while only 36% favored the death penalty.
Multiple factors have contributed to declining support for capital punishment in the United States. Americans have become increasingly concerned about the irreversible nature of executions given the risk of wrongful convictions, as evidenced by numerous exonerations from death row. Public awareness has grown regarding systemic issues like racial disparities in death sentences and the disproportionate impact on economically disadvantaged people. Additionally, faith in the death penalty’s deterrent effect has eroded significantly – Gallup polling shows that the percentage of Americans who believe capital punishment prevents future crimes dropped from 13% in 1991 to just 6% in 2015, the last time this question was surveyed.
Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, praised the decision: :
By commuting almost all federal death sentences, President Biden has sent a strong message to Americans that the death penalty is not the answer to our country’s concerns about public safety. I commend President Biden for recognizing that we don’t have to kill people to show that killing is wrong, that we can and should reduce violence in our communities by refusing to sanction more violence and killing in our courts and prisons.
Donnie Oliverio, a retired Ohio police officer whose partner, Bryan Hurst, was killed by a prisoner whose death sentence was commuted, said the killer’s execution “would have brought me no peace. The president has done what is right here.”
The recent federal death row commutations by President Biden reflect broader trends in U.S. capital punishment. Most U.S. jurisdictions – including the majority of states, federal system, and military – have effectively halted executions. Many states have formally abolished capital punishment altogether. While a small number of states continue to conduct executions, they do so far less frequently than in previous decades. This shifting landscape was further evidenced in December 2024, when North Carolina’s departing Governor Roy Cooper commuted the sentences of 15 death row inmates to life imprisonment.
Federal commutations of death sentences followed calls from ECPM and many other organizations and prominent figures, including Pope Francis, who pressed for this action during President Biden remaining time in office.
Adriano Martins is a former civil servent of the European Union (from 1986 to 2022) who has assumed various responsabilities : interim Director of the European Agency for Reconstruction in the Balkans, Deputy Ambassador of the EU for Serbia, Deputy Head of Division in charge of political relations with the six Eastern Partnership countries with the last five years in charge of EU actions on human rights, including the external policiy of EU in favor of the abolition of the death penalty.