They include serial killers and men sentenced for kidnapping and killing women and children.
President Joe Biden has commuted the sentences of 37 death row prisoners to life in prison.
“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.”
Biden’s decision drew criticism from Republican lawmakers.
“When given the choice between law-abiding Americans or criminals, Joe Biden and the Democrats choose criminals every time,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said on social media.
Biden is slated to leave office on Jan. 20, 2025.
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His successor, President-elect Donald Trump, has said he would expand executions for federal inmates. In his speech announcing his run for president in the 2024 election, he said that people who were “caught selling drugs” would “receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” alluding to fentanyl dealers.
Who Was Pardoned
The 37 death row inmates whose death sentences were commuted by Biden are Shannon Wayne Agofsky, Billie Jerome Allen, Aquilia Marcivicci Barnette, Brandon Leon Basham, Anthony George Battle, Meier Jason Brown, Carlos David Caro, Wesley Paul Coonce Jr., Brandon Michael Council, Christopher Emory Cramer, Len Davis, Joseph Ebron, Rickey Allen Fackrell, Edward Leon Fields Jr., Chadrick Evan Fulks, Marvin Charles Gabrion II, Edgar Baltazar Garcia, Thomas Morocco Hager, Charles Michael Hall, Norris G. Holder, Richard Allen Jackson, Jurijus Kadamovas, Daryl Lawrence, Iouri Mikhel, Ronald Mikos, James H. Roane Jr., Julius Omar Robinson, David Anthony Runyon, Ricardo Sanchez Jr., Thomas Steven Sanders, Kaboni Savage, Mark Isaac Snarr, Rejon Taylor, Richard Tipton, Jorge Avila Torrez, Daniel Troya, and Alejandro Enrique Ramies Umana.
Notable Crimes
All who had their sentence commuted had been convicted of murder.
Kaboni Savage, a former organized crime leader, was convicted of ordering or carrying out the deaths of 12 people, including four children, as a drug dealer in Philadelphia in the early 2000s. He was the first man in modern Philadelphia history to receive the death sentence.
Iouri Mikhel and Jurijus Kadamovas had each received the death penalty for their involvement in a series of killings and kidnappings for ransom targeting Georgian and Russian immigrants in 2001.
Len Davis, a former New Orleans Police Department officer, received a death sentence in 1996 for ordering the killing of a woman after she filed a complaint against him for police brutality.
Brandon Michael Council was convicted of killing two women during a bank robbery, and Billie Jerome Allen was involved in a bank robbery in which a security guard was killed.
Three Federal Inmates Still Face Execution
Only three federal inmates continue to face execution after the latest pardons.
They include 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; Dylann Roof, who shot and killed nine people at a church in South Carolina in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
Original News Source Link – Epoch Times
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