Ex-Judges Join Push for Biden to Commute Federal Death Sentences

Nearly two dozen ex-federal judges added their names to a growing call for President Joe Biden to take the rare step of commuting federal death sentences before leaving office.

The letter to Biden on Wednesday from former district and appellate judges didn’t mention concern with Donald Trump’s resumption of federal executions during his administration. But other groups have signaled urgency for the White House to act before he assumes the presidency again. Trump will be inaugurated on Jan. 20.

The 21 judges cited “fundamental problems” with the federal death penalty, including “race discrimination in trial and sentencing, intellectual disability of defendants, and appallingly poor legal representation.”

They said federal executions shouldn’t proceed, and urged Biden to “use your constitutional commutation power” to reduce all federal death sentences to life without parole.

Former jurists signing the letter included Nancy Gertner of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts; Shira Scheindlin of the Southern District of New York; Diane Wood of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and David Tatel of the D.C. Circuit.

Governors in eight states have granted mass clemency for death sentences since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

But federal death penalty commutations are rare. Biden’s most recent Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, approved a few combined as they left office in 2017 and 2001, respectively. One of Obama’s was a military case.

There are more than three dozen inmates on federal death row. They include Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev; Dylann Roof, convicted in a South Carolina church shooting of nine parishioners; and Robert Bowers, who was convicted in the Tree of Life Synagogue mass shooting in Pittsburgh.

Trump resumed federal executions in 2020 after a 17-year hiatus and accelerated them toward the end of his term in office. He campaigned in 2024 on expanding capital punishment.

Biden campaigned in 2020 on working to end the federal death penalty. A Justice Department moratorium paused executions after he took office but his administration continued to defend existing cases and authorized one new capital prosecution, the Death Penalty Information Center said.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the judges’ letter that follows the recent push from Democrats in Congress, civil rights groups, Pope Francis, and US Catholic bishops for Biden, who is Catholic, to commute federal death sentences.

Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said this week that Biden’s view on the death penalty hasn’t changed, and is “reviewing and thinking through” the process and “would have more to announce on pardons and commutations.”