AP SETS THE STANDARD FOR POLITICAL REPORTING. DONATE Menu Image Show Search Donald Trump Luigi Mangione IRS payments Matt Gaetz ethics report Santa Cruz Wharf Politics Biden gives life in prison to 37 of 40 federal death row inmates before Trump can resume executions By WILL WEISSERT and DARLENE SUPERVILLE Updated 5:11 AM GMT+6, December 24, 2024 Share WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday announced that he is commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump, an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment, takes office. The move spares the lives of people convicted in killings, including the slayings of police and military officers, people on federal land and those involved in deadly bank robberies or drug deals, as well as the killings of guards or prisoners in federal facilities. The decision leaves three federal inmates to face execution. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history.