WASHINGTON, DC – Twenty-one retired federal judges—appointed by six different Presidents, both Republican and Democrat—from district courts and appellate circuits throughout the U.S. – sent a letter to President Biden last week, urging him to commute all federal death sentences, according to an Associated Press report here.
In their letter, the judges said, “While we may have different views on various issues related to the death penalty, we are united in our view that it is appropriate and important for you to commute all federal death sentences to life in prison without parole.”
The judges added that “the administration of the federal death penalty has been rife with fundamental problems, including race discrimination in trial and sentencing, intellectual disability of defendants, and appallingly poor legal representation.”
The judges urged Biden to stop the proceeding of federal executions and “use (his) constitutional commutation power.”
The letter, said the Associated Press, joins many other individuals and organizations, “including dozens of current and former prosecutors, over 200 Black pastors, hundreds of Catholics, two dozen corrections officials, 140 civil rights and human rights organizations, 166 families who have lost loved ones to homicide, intellectual disability and mental health advocates, and death row exonerees,” asking Biden to commute all 40 federal death sentences.
The letter from these organizations to President Biden described the racial injustice bias and injustice present in the federal death penalty system, AP said, noting, “People of color are more likely to be capitally prosecuted, sentenced to death, and executed, especially if the victim is white.”
The statements from these organizations in the letter are corroborated by data from the Federal Capital Habeas Project, AP said, which claims, “Although Black adults comprise only 10 percent of our nation’s population, they account for 38 percent of the people currently under federal death sentence,” with “Black men on federal death row who were sentenced by all-white juries.”
Attempts to pardon those on federal death row have been intensified due to the election of Donald Trump, who will most likely resume executions suspended by the Biden administration, AP writes.
When first elected in 2016, Trump ended a 17-year pause in federal executions during his presidency, with “13 federal executions” carried out during the last six months of his presidency, according to the Associated Press.
