Among those pardoned are, among others, nine people who have killed other prisoners in prison.
18:52•Updated 19:17
In the United States, the president Joe Biden has commuted the sentences of 37 federally sentenced criminals on Christmas Eve.
Instead of the death sentence, they now face life imprisonment.
There are hardened criminals such as cop killers, bank robbers and drug dealers.
– Don’t misunderstand. I condemn these acts and feel sad for the victims and for all the families who have suffered or lost loved ones, Biden said.
The sentences of the three death row inmates remained unchanged.
One of them was involved in the Boston terrorist attack in 2013. Another is a white supremacist who shot dead nine black churchgoers in South Carolina in 2015. A third shot dead 11 Jews in a synagogue in Pennsylvania in 2018.
Biden acted in the last tinga before the change of power Donald Trump’s to the second presidential term. In the previous Trump term, 13 death sentences were carried out – more than in a long time.
In a way, Trump returned it, because the last time the death sentence was practically implemented in the United States was in 2003.
In 2024, 25 people were executed in the United States, all of them based on state sentences.
Biden’s position on federal death sentences has been – in contrast to Trump’s – negative. Trump has pushed for the death penalty, especially for drug dealers.
So Biden’s “amnesty” does not apply to those sentenced to death at the state level. They are the British Broadcasting Corporation According to the BBC about 2,250.