Business leaders and families of murder victims urge Biden to commute federal death row sentences

Business leaders and families of murder victims are calling on President Joe Biden to commute the sentences of inmates on federal death row.

Meta’s former Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and Sir Richard Branson signed a letter to Biden along with other prominent business leaders asking the president to “fulfill your campaign promise of working to end the death penalty by using your clemency power to commute all federal death sentences to a term of life imprisonment.”

And it added: “We believe this act will cement your legacy of leadership, compassion and advancing racial justice.”

Several other advocacy organizations called on the president to commute the sentences in letters released on Monday. There are 40 people on federal death row, including the gunman who killed nine South Carolina churchgoers in 2015, the surviving Boston Marathon bomber and a man who fatally shot 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.

The majority of the inmates are housed at the Special Confinement Unit at US Penitentiary Terre Haute in Indiana, the location of the federal death chamber.

Family members of murder victims, including Valerie Lucznikowska of Warwick, New York, whose nephew, Adam Arias, died at the World Trade Center on 9/11, told the president: “The death penalty has only prolonged an already agonizing experience with a lengthy process that leaves us with more pain, despair, and isolation.

“The complex, constitutionally mandated legal process causes decades of uncertainty and waiting, which continually resurfaces trauma and delays healing.”

During Biden’s presidential campaign, he vowed to “work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example.” Even inmates convicted of egregious crimes “should instead serve life sentences without probation or parole,” Biden’s campaign website stated.

But advocates contend the president has done little to see that promise through. Now, they’re calling on him to act before President-elect Trump takes the White House. Thirteen federal death row inmates were executed during Trump’s time in office.

In his latest presidential campaign, he promised to expand the use of capital punishment and has expressed his support for group executions, hangings and firing squads in speaking with advisers, Rolling Stone reported.

In recent weeks, advocates have launched a fierce campaign to squash Trump’s plans for federal death row. The president-elect would not be able to reverse the commutations if Biden enacts them.

On Sunday, Pope Francis joined their efforts.

“Today, it comes to my heart to ask all of you to pray for the prisoners in the United States who are on death row,” he said from his window in Vatican City. “Let’s pray that their sentence would be commuted or changed.”

His words were echoed by the Catholic Mobilizing Network, a group of 30,000 advocates, including Catholic bishops and dioceses, who also submitted a letter to the president.

The group said there is a risk that “innocent people will be put to death” if the president does not act. “It is because of our moral conviction... that we urge you to use your authority to commute the federal death row before leaving office,” the group said.