Faith Leaders Call On Biden To Commute Federal Death Row Sentences
Faith leaders called on President Joe Biden on Monday to commute all federal death row sentences before President-elect Donald Trump, who supports capital punishment, takes office next month.
The group — which includes Black pastors, Catholics, former corrections officials, civil rights advocates, current and former prosecutors — reflects bipartisan concern about the death penalty and the use of capital punishment.
“The death penalty has for generations been a veiled extension of our national legacy of racial terror and lynchings,” said Jamila Hodge, CEO of Equal Justice USA, a national organization aimed at criminal justice reform. “President Biden, like me a person of deep faith in God, has a historic opportunity to demonstrate mercy and the belief that we are all redeemable, by preventing an execution spree that will not make us safer, while moving us closer to reckoning with a system that unfairly targets Black people.”
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As of 2021, 2,382 prisoners in the U.S. were under sentence of death, both on the state and federal levels. Of those sentenced, 98 percent are male and 40 percent Black.
The use of the death penalty, while has been gradually disappearing in the United States, remains popular among a majority of Americans despite widespread doubts about its administration, fairness and whether it deters crime. More Americans favor than oppose the death penalty: 60% of U.S. adults favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, including 27% who strongly favor it, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.
But Joia Thornton, founder and national director of the Faith Leaders of Color Coalition, said Biden, a practicing Catholic, has “a deep-rooted relationship with Black faith communities, and FLOCC represents more than 500 Black faith leaders, conventions, congregations and convocations in America.”
Commuting the federal death row, Thornton said, “would be an incredible milestone for those who believe life has value, mercy is encompassing and grace covers a multitude of sin.”
There are currently 40 people on federal death row, including some of the nation’s most notorious killers, including Dylann Roof, the gunman who killed nine Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, and Robert Gregory Bowers, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter.
In the letter sent to the White House, faith leaders called for an immediate end to all federal death sentences.
“It would acknowledge and help redress the racial bias built into the federal death penalty system, allow vast government resources to be redirected to policies that actually improve public safety, and allow the families of victims and incarcerated persons to focus on healing instead of living in legal limbo,” the letter said.
In another letter on behalf of more than 30,000 Catholic bishops, dioceses, state Catholic conferences and religious communities, a group called Catholics Mobilizing Network, led by Executive Director Krisanne Vaillancourt Murphy, invoked Pope Francis’s call on world leaders to engage in acts of mercy and bring “an end to every form of death penalty.”
“As a lifelong Catholic, you understand that every person is made in the image of God and that our Heavenly Father does not shut the door on anyone,” the letter said. “By commuting these sentences, you could use your constitutional authority to align with the clarion call during this special Jubilee 2025 year. Indeed, your commutation of the entire federal row would be a tangible expression of hope that the Holy Father has called for.”
The White House did not immediately comment on the letters.
Presidents do typically offer pardons during their last few weeks in office.
While the Biden administration has halted the use of the death penalty while the president has been in office, the Department of Justice has continued to seek such punishments.
Last week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden was expected to make more clemency announcements “at the end of his term.”
“He’s thinking through that process very thoroughly,” Jean-Pierre said.
Clemente Lisi is the executive editor of Religion Unplugged. He previously served as deputy head of news at the New York Daily News and a longtime reporter at The New York Post. Follow him on X @ClementeLisi.