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US President Joe Biden has commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 prisoners on death row, commuting their sentences to life in prison without parole.
The three who have not been charged include the Boston Marathon bomber and the man who killed Jewish worshipers in 2018.
In his speech, Mr. Biden said he is “more convinced than ever that we must end the use of the death penalty in government”. The number does not include the more than 2,000 people who were sentenced to death by the authorities.
Biden’s decision comes after President-elect Donald Trump in January, who has resumed killing the government while in office.
Among those seized by Mr. Biden are nine people convicted of murdering fellow inmates, four of murders that occurred during a bank robbery and one of killing a prison guard.
“Make no mistake: I condemn these killers, I sympathize with the victims of their evil, and the pain with all the families who have lost something immeasurable and irreparable,” Biden said.
Disgraced former New Orleans police officer Len Davis, who ran a drug ring with other officers and planned the murder of a woman, is one of those who have been shown mercy.
The three who remain on death row include Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who helped bomb the Boston Marathon in 2013, and sworn white Dylann Roof shot and killed nine black people in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015.
Robert Bowers, who killed 11 Jewish worshipers during the 2018 mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, will also remain on death row.
Biden campaigned as an opponent of the death penalty, and the Justice Department issued an executive order banning its use in government after he became president.
During his first term in office, Trump oversaw 13 death by lethal injection in the last six months of his reign.
There have been no public executions in the US since 2003 until Trump resumed executions in July 2020.
During the re-election campaign, Trump indicated that he would expand the use of capital punishment to include people and drug traffickers, as well as immigrants who kill American citizens.
Biden appeared to echo Trump’s intentions in his speech, saying he could not “in good conscience – stand back and allow the new administration to resume the killing that I stopped”.
In US law, these amnesty decisions cannot be changed by the president’s successor.
Biden’s proposal does not affect people sentenced to death in federal courts, which are close about 2,250 prisoners according to the Death Penalty Information Center. More than 70 murders in the state occurred during Biden’s presidency.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states. Six other states, including Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, have restrictions.
Earlier this month, Mr. Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and pardoned 39 others who were convicted of non-violent crimes.
He also pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, who is facing two felony charges. He pleaded guilty to a tax charge in early September, and was found guilty of illegal drug and gun possession in June – becoming the first child of a president to ever be convicted of a crime.
The US Constitution mandates that the president has “general powers to grant reparations and pardons for offenses committed against the United States, except in the case of a felony”.
