The death sentences of 52 people were commuted to life in prison last year in historic acts of clemency on the federal and state levels, more than twice the number of 25 people who were executed in the U.S.
On December 23, President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row, declining to commute the sentences of Robert D. Bowers, convicted of killing 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018; Dylan Roof, who shot and killed nine Black parishioners at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who, with his brother, killed three people and injured more than a dozen others at the 2013 Boston Marathon.
Eight days later, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper commuted the death sentences of 15 people to life in prison, the most significant step any North Carolina governor has taken to curtail the death penalty in that state in history.
Still, the two unprecedented acts of clemency fell short of what advocates had hoped for.
Biden partly fulfilled his 2020 campaign promise to end the death penalty at the federal level and encourage states to follow suit. However, by not commuting the sentences of all 40, his actions almost certainly ensure that the three men excepted from the commutation order will be executed during the Trump administration. In the last six months of his first term, Trump authorized the execution of 13 people after a 17-year hiatus at the federal level. During the campaign, Trump reaffirmed his intention to resume executions and expand the federal death penalty to include non-capital crimes.
Cooper’s order left 121 people on death row, the fifth largest death row population in the United States.
“The cases that remain are tainted by serious flaws including race discrimination in jury selection, racist language used at trials, questionable evidence, and defendants with mental illness or other conditions that make them particularly vulnerable to excessive sentences,” North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty Executive Director Noel Nickle stated.
“Should we accept that saving some is better than none? That is where he leaves us by choosing politics rather than grace,” said DPF Board President Mike Farrell in response to Biden’s commutations. He noted that Cooper’s commutations were “a historic step. And we commend and thank Gov. Cooper for taking it. Our thoughts are with the 121 that remain on death row, and with the NCCADP, and all of our allies, we will continue to advocate for full commutations in all the death penalty states, including here in California.”
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