Before handing over authority to President-elect Donald Trump on January 20, U.S. President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of 40 federal death row inmates on Monday, changing them to life in prison without the possibility of release.
Biden’s action will thwart Trump’s intention to resume carrying out executions at a high rate. Although the death sentence may be pursued more vigorously in subsequent cases, mercy decisions cannot be overturned by a president’s successor, unlike executive decrees.
During his first term in office, which ran from 2017 to 2021, Trump resumed federal executions after a nearly two-decade hiatus.
When he took office in January 2021, Biden, who opposed the death penalty during his presidential campaign, suspended federal executions.
