(NewsNation) — Hundreds of anti-capital punishment groups are calling on President Joe Biden to commute federal death row sentences during his remaining months in office fearing a renewed “execution spree” under President-elect Donald Trump.
“Suddenly the whole world has changed and if Joe Biden doesn’t commute these sentences, then Donald Trump is going to kill them,” Abraham Bonowitz, the executive director of anti-capital punishment group Death Penalty Action, said.
The group has spearheaded a coalition of more than 350 groups that sent Biden a letter 24 hours after the election saying they have “renewed concern and urgency” with Trump coming into office in less than two months.
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They ask Biden to commute death sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“We can’t trust the government with the power to do this and to get it right, and not just in making sure that it’s the right person who committed the crime, but also to be fair in the application of the death penalty,” Bonowitz said.
There are currently 40 inmates on federal death row and the group includes Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Tree of Life mass shooter Robert Bowers and Dylan Roof, who murdered nine members of a Black South Carolina congregation in a racially motivated attack.
Prior to the election, Trump signaled that his new administration would not shy away from the death penalty.
“We’ve never had (such) massive amounts of drugs pouring into our country,” he said during a campaign event in Arizona. “And by the way, you’ll never solve the problem without the death penalty.”
The Biden administration did not return requests for comment from NewsNation.
Trump’s record on executions
During the last six months of Trump’s first term, a record 13 federal inmates were put to death, with the last execution taking place days before Biden took office.
The number far surpasses executions under any president for more than a century. Prior to July 2020, the federal government hadn’t executed anyone in 17 years.
In the case of Brandon Bernard — who was convicted of killing an Iowa couple and executed in December 2020 — Trump himself agreed that there might be valid reasons not to proceed, reported the AP.
Trump’s administration also approved the use of pentobarbital in lethal injections despite evidence it might cause pulmonary edema, a painful condition akin to drowning. Fourteen states have also used pentobarbital in executions and five more are considering using it, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
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An autopsy report obtained by the AP for Corey Johnson, convicted of seven drug-related killings in 2021, concluded that during his execution he suffered pulmonary edema. The report showed that so much fluid rushed up his trachea that some exited his mouth.
In his second term, Trump indicated he would expand the death penalty for migrants accused of killing U.S. citizens and law enforcement officers, as well as people convicted of drug and human trafficking.
“These are terrible, terrible, horrible people who are responsible for death, carnage and crime all over the country,” Trump said, referring to drug traffickers during an event kicking off his campaign.
The Trump campaign did not return requests for comment by NewsNation.
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Rev. Sharon Risher’s mother, two cousins and a childhood friend were killed in the Charleston Mother Emanuel Church shooting in 2015 by Roof, who sits on death row.
She was the first to sign the letter asking Biden for the commutations.
“Killing Roof is not going to bring my family back. It’s not going to erase all the grief and heartache that I have had, and all it’s going to do is compound that feeling of wanting somebody to die,” Risher said.
Risher has requested a meeting with Biden on behalf of the groups pushing for commutation. She believes the only way of forgetting Roof is to lock him up without any possibility of parole.
“There will be no appeals, no more hearing from him again, he will be lost in obscurity when it comes to me and that’s the best I can hope for, without wanting him to be killed or anybody to be killed,” she said.
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While Risher is working with the groups pushing to commute death penalty sentences, other victims’ family members argue the penalty serves justice.
Michele Rosenthal, who lost her brothers in the 2018 Tree of Life massacre that left 11 dead, said she supported the Justice Department’s decision to pursue the death penalty in a 2023 interview with Union Progress.
“This massacre was not just a mass murder of innocent citizens during a service in a house of worship,” she said. “The death penalty must apply to vindicate justice and to offer some measure of deterrence from horrific hate crimes happening again and again.”
Seven of the nine families who lost loved ones in the massacre sent a letter in July 2021 to Attorney General Merrick Garland reflecting their support of the death penalty.
Can Biden commute all federal death sentences?
Biden has the power to commute all the sentences under blanket clemency until his last day in office, said Corinna Barrett Lain, a law professor at the University of Richmond who’s written a forthcoming book on lethal injection.
If he doesn’t, Trump “can move very, very quickly” on executions if that is his priority, she said.
There is still a legal process that needs to be followed prior to an execution which includes obtaining a death warrant and that will face expected legal challenges, but it’s not likely those challenges “would get their due regard” as evidenced during the last Trump administration, she said.
The Supreme Court cleared all legal obstacles during Trump’s first term to greenlight executions, even in a case where the appellate court still hadn’t issued a ruling, deemed “highly unusual” by SCOTUSblog.
Across 13 executions the Supreme Court vacated 22 states of executions and injunctions, Lain said.
“The stays of execution were reversed without opinion, without resolution of the constitutional claims on the merits, without explanation, and the prisoners were promptly executed,” she said.
While campaigning in 2020, Biden promised to abolish the federal death penalty but has done little to fulfill that pledge after stepping into office.
His Justice Department announced a moratorium on federal executions in 2021, which halted executions but the department has since pushed for the death penalty against the suspects charged with mass shootings in Pittsburgh and Buffalo.