Trump Furious At Biden’s Decision To Commute Death Row Inmates’ Sentences To Life In Prison

On Tuesday, President-elect Donald Trump blasted President Joe Biden for his decision to commute 37 federal inmates off of death row.

Trump stated in a post to Truth Social, “When you hear the acts of each, you won’t believe that he did this. Makes no sense. Relatives and friends are further devastated. They can’t believe this is happening!”

In his announcement of the commutations on Monday, Biden said, “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.”

In his post, Trump stated, “As soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers and monsters. We will be a Nation of Law and Order again!”

Biden commuted the 37 death sentences, so all of the inmates will serve life in prison without the chance for parole.

The three men include Dylann Roof, a white nationalist who in 2015 murdered nine people at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the brothers responsible for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people in 2018 at Pittsburg’s Tree of Life Synagogue.

Although Biden’s decision cannot be reversed once Trump is president, Trump’s Justice Department will likely have a strong emphasis on the death penalty in future cases. Trump has long made clear that his plan to combat all violence, crime, human trafficking and drug issues involves a increased use of the death penalty.  In the final weeks of his 2024 campaign, Trump continually promised his followers that he would push for the death penalty to be used less sparingly than it has been under Biden’s term.

Before Trump’s first term, only three federal killings had been ordered since 1988, but in 2019, Trump’s Attorney General William Barr announced that the federal government would return to executions as a form of punishment. In the final six months of Trump’s term in 2020, 13 individuals were executed by the federal government – the federal government’s most executions since 1896, and more than all 50 states combined that year.

There are over 2,000 people in the United States convicted in state courts and sentenced to death.