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President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 men on federal death row but declined to save the lives of three men convicted of “hate-motivated mass murder” or “terrorism.”
Dec. 23, 2024, 2:06 p.m. ET
The number of prisoners on federal death row shrank from 40 to just three on Monday after President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 men who had been facing the death penalty.
Leaving three men on death row, Mr. Biden said in a statement, is in line with his opposition to carrying out the death penalty “in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”
It also leaves the possibility that President-elect Donald J. Trump, who carried out 13 executions during his first term, will have the remaining three men executed when he returns to office. And the Justice Department under Mr. Biden is also pursuing the death penalty against the gunman who carried out a racist mass shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2022, seeking to add him to the small group of people that remain on federal death row.
Here are the men whom Mr. Biden chose not to spare.
Dylann Roof, 30, was convicted of hate crimes in the killing of nine Black parishioners in a racist attack on a Charleston church in 2015.
A federal jury sentenced Mr. Roof to death in 2017. He had admitted his guilt and offered to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of life in prison.
The Justice Department sought the death penalty over the objection of survivors of the attack and many relatives of the victims.
