Biden commutes death sentences of 37 federal prisoners

President Joe Biden is taking 37 people off federal death row. That leaves just three federal prisoners awaiting execution, including the man who murdered 11 Jewish worshipers in the Tree of Life building on Oct. 27, 2018.

Those whose sentences Biden commuted will now serve life sentences in prison.

“Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole,” Biden announced in a statement released Monday.

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Along with the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, Biden did not commute the sentences of two other people whose crimes included mass shootings or acts of terrorism: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, otherwise known as the Boston Marathon Bomber, one of the two brothers responsible for killing three people and wounding 281 others in 2013; and Dylann Roof, a white nationalist who murdered nine people at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.

“I’ve dedicated my career to reducing violent crime and ensuring a fair and effective justice system,” Biden said in a statement. “Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my administration has imposed on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”

The Biden administration announced a moratorium on federal capital punishment in 2021 in order to study the protocols used.

Most of the 37 prisoners whose sentences were commuted were convicted for “less high-profile offenses, such as murders tied to drug trafficking or the killings of prison guards or other inmates,” according to CNN.

“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,” Biden said in his statement. “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.”

Anti-death penalty activists, as well as 67 congressional Democrats, including Rep. Summer Lee, who represents Squirrel Hill, had urged Biden to use his executive powers to grant clemency for all 40 federal inmates on death row, including the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter.

A Nov. 20 letter to Biden signed by Lee and other members of Congress said exercising those powers granted in the Constitution would “address longstanding injustices in our legal system, and set our nation on the path toward ending mass incarceration.”

The letter encouraged Biden to help “broad classes of people and cases,” including the elderly, chronically ill, those on death row, people with “unjustified sentencing disparities” and women punished for defending themselves against their abusers.

In a series of open letters, a group of human rights activists, former correction officials and crime victims asked the president to commute the death sentences of federal prisoners, noting that President-elect Donald Trump supports the death penalty and restarted executions during his first term as president after a nearly 20-year pause.

Over the last 50 years, groups have pushed for outgoing presidents to pardon or commute sentences of federal prisoners under the theory that outgoing presidents don’t have anything to lose politically, according to David Harris, the Sally Ann Semenko endowed chair and professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh’s law school.

Harris noted that President Bill Clinton pardoned Mark Rich, a businessman convicted of making oil deals with Iran during the Iran hostage crisis, on his last day in office.

“It was a very unpopular thing to do and one that people thought was way out of line, but nobody could do anything about it,” Harris said.
The president’s power to pardon and commute federal sentences is unlimited, he explained. And while a president could summarily commute the sentences of all federal prisoners on death row, the only way that action would make logical sense is if the country’s chief executive didn’t believe in the death penalty.

“It seems to me that you’d have to give extremely serious thought, critical thought, to the idea of commuting all federal death row sentences because that would include people who are obviously guilty of some of the worst crimes,” Harris said.

If a president commutes a sentence rather than pardons a prisoner (a commutation is a change of sentence while a pardon wipes out a conviction), victims, family members of those murdered and those who testified in federal death sentence cases could feel betrayed, Harris said.

As to why the federal government would continue to seek the death penalty under a president who put a moratorium on the punishment, Harris said that the sentence is reserved for “the worst of the worst.”

“If it has any justification,” he said, “it is because there are some crimes that are so bad that nothing else will do.”

Harris said that large swaths of the American public don’t agree with the death penalty and studies have shown it doesn’t work as a deterrent to crimes, so it’s only value is punishment.

“Once the government decides to pursue it and brings along the community as its witnesses, and you have a substantial part of the community supporting it, to turn around and reverse that with a stroke of the pen would be a really, really strong act,” he said.

Anthony and Howard Fienberg are the sons of Joyce Fienberg, who was murdered during the Oct. 27 attack at the Tree of Life building in Squirrel Hill. They sent a letter to Biden urging him not to pardon or commute the convicted murderer’s sentence.

They cited several reasons why they believe it is not in the country’s best interest for a change to the sentence, including the honor of the justice system and the work of the jury; the importance of death row limiting the shooter’s ability to spread antisemitic and racist rhetoric; the convicted murderer’s lack of remorse; and the need to honor their mother and others murdered during the attack.

“Nothing will bring back our mom,” the pair wrote, before noting that the U.S. justice system confronted the shooter’s crimes and provided a fair trial that delivered a balanced verdict.

Marc Simon’s parents, Sylvan and Bernice Simon, also were murdered during the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. The murderer, Simon said, was given a fair trial and found guilty by a jury of his peers who believed he deserved to be put to death for the severity of his crimes.

Simon said that while the Constitution grants the president the power to pardon and commute sentences, that power should only be granted to the direct victims impacted by such “heinous crimes.”

“It is my duty to honor and respect what I truly believe would have been my parents’ wishes regarding disposition of the perpetrator who brutally and senselessly murdered them and nine others for simply being a member of the Jewish faith and for freely practicing their religious beliefs and tenets,” he said.

A change in sentence, Simon said, would be a miscarriage of justice and circumvention of the legal system, and would discount and show disrespect for the lives and horrific deaths of the 11 victims: Joyce Fienberg, Richard Gottfried, Rose Mallinger, Jerry Rabinowitz, Cecil Rosenthal, David Rosenthal, Bernice Simon, Sylvan Simon, Dan Stein, Melvin Wax and Irving Younger.

In the case of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, Simon said, the death penalty isn’t about retribution; rather it provides “proper, fair and effective justice for the families, as well as to serve as a deterrent to others from committing similar criminal acts.”

Tree of Life CEO Carole Zawatsky noted that while not everyone agrees, “many in our community considered the sentencing of the attack’s perpetrator as the justice their loved ones deserved and the start of a new chapter. They found some semblance of closure in the culmination of an emotionally charged and grueling trial for which they waited years through countless delays.” PJC

David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.