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Pressley praises Biden for saving death row inmates
Rep. Ayanna Pressley has repeatedly called for the abolition of the federal death penalty.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley praised President Joe Biden’s recent decision to commute the sentences of nearly all the people on federal death row, calling it a “historic and groundbreaking act” in a statement Monday.
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Pressley, who represents much of Boston and some surrounding suburbs, has long been an outspoken opponent of the death penalty. She had previously urged Biden to use his clemency authority to commute the sentences of all 40 people on federal death row before leaving office next month.
Biden stopped just short of Pressley’s demand, commuting the sentences of 37 people in total. Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is one of the inmates still facing execution, alongside Dylann Roof and Robert Bowers. Roof was convicted of killing nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston in 2015 in a racist shooting spree. Bowers was convicted of killing 11 Jewish worshippers at Tree of life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
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Biden commuted the sentences of the 37 other inmates to life sentences without the possibility of parole. Tsarnaev, Roof, and Bowers did not have their sentences commuted because their cases involved “terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,” Biden said in a statement. Many more people remain on death row at the state level.
“[Biden’s decision] will save lives, address the deep racial disparities in our criminal legal system, and send a powerful message about redemption, decency, and humanity,” Pressley said in a statement.
Biden campaigned in 2020 on ending the federal death penalty, and directed the Justice Department to issue a moratorium on federal executions in 2021. Earlier this month, he commuted the sentences of about 1,500 people who were released from prison and placed on home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic and pardoned 39 people convicted of nonviolent crimes.
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President-elect Donald Trump has promised to restart federal executions when he returns to office. He restarted them during his first term after a pause of almost two decades. A total of 13 executions were carried out under his watch, all of which occurred during the final six months of his presidency. Trump said during his 2024 campaign that drug dealers and human traffickers should be subject to the death penalty.
In an interview with GBH News, Pressley said that Biden should go even further, releasing incarcerated people who do not pose a threat to public safety.
“State-sanctioned murder is not justice. It is not a deterrent for crime,” Pressley said on CNN this week.
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