Trump Slams Biden's Federal Death Row Commutations: 'It Makes No Sense'

President-elect Donald Trump reiterated his commitment Tuesday to “vigorously pursue” the death penalty, taking aim at President Joe Biden's decision to commute the sentences of nearly all federal death row inmates.

Trump also added to the backlash from some against Biden's unprecedented move, which has drawn both criticism and praise.

“This makes no sense,” Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social. “Relatives and friends are even more devastated. They can't believe this is happening!

“As soon as I am inaugurated, I will call on the Department of Justice to vigorously enforce the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers and monsters,” he continued. “We will once again be a nation of law and order!”

Biden announced Monday that he would commute the sentences of 37 of 40 federal death row inmates to life sentences without the possibility of parole, saying he was “guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender.”

The action had been the subject of speculation for weeks as a broad coalition of criminal justice groups, former prosecutors and business leaders wrote letters to the White House asking it to commute the sentences before Trump took office. This month, Pope Francis also called on Biden, a Catholic, to commute the sentences; Biden is expected to meet with the pontiff next month, in the final days of his presidency.

In a statement released Monday, the president noted that the commutations are consistent with the moratorium on executions his administration imposed after taking office, and that “in good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume the executions that I interrupted.”

But Biden also insisted on refusing to commute the sentences of three federal death row inmates involved in mass killings: Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 people during the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018; Dylann Roof, who shot nine people at an ahistorically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who carried out a bombing during the 2013 Boston Marathon.

Although he spared the lives of the other 37 detainees, Biden added: “Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, I grieve for the victims of their despicable actions, and I ache for all the families who have suffered loss.” unimaginable and irreparable. »

Trump campaigned on expanding the federal death penalty after his first term, during which his Justice Department put 13 federal inmates to death, a number not seen since Grover Cleveland's late presidency. from the 1800s.

Trump has since said he would like to expand the death penalty to include child rapists, migrants who kill U.S. citizens and law enforcement officers, as well as people convicted of drug trafficking and human beings. It's unclear how the president-elect would accomplish this, and legal experts say it would require congressional support and face immense constitutional challenges.

Still, death penalty supporters said they took Trump's statements seriously.

Biden, meanwhile, faces criticism over his death row commutation, not only from his political opponents, but also from law enforcement and some victims' families.

“We thought the timing was despicable,” Tim Timmerman, whose 19-year-old daughter Rachel was killed in 1997, told NBC affiliate WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

His daughter's convicted killer, Marvin Gabrion, is also accused of killing Rachel Timmerman's granddaughter, whose body was never found, and is the prime suspect in three other deaths. Gabrion is now 71 years old.

“Where is the justice in just giving him a prison bed to die comfortably? » Timmerman said, adding: “I was not the one who sentenced Gabrion to the death penalty. It was the jury, and I always think it's important to emphasize that it was the jurors who sentenced Gabrion to the death penalty.”

The daughter of Donna Major, one of two South Carolina bank employees killed by federal death row inmate Brandon Council in 2017, called Council's sentence commutation unfair and an “abuse of power.”

“My mother’s murder is being used as a political game play by a president who is not even fit for office,” Heather Turner said Tuesday on Facebook. “I stand by my position that Joe Biden has blood on his hands.”

While Biden is being praised by anti-death penalty groups who have long argued that the death penalty process is tainted, in part, because of racial disparities among those sentenced to death and executed, some also believe he did not go far enough by failing to take the necessary measures. shuttling between all the federal death row inmates as well as the four inmates on U.S. military death row.

The Rev. Sharon Risher, chair of the Death Penalty Action board whose mother, Ethel Lance, and cousins, Tywanza Sanders and Susie Jackson, were among those killed in the 2015 Charleston shooting, said in a communicated that “politics got in the way”. of mercy.”

“You cannot rank the victims, Mr. President. I implore you to finish the job, not only with the three men who are still on federal death row, but also with those who are on federal death row. military death,” Risher said. “There’s still time.”

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