In this image from the video uplink from the detention center to the courtroom, Dylann Roof appears at Centralized Bond Hearing Court on June 19, 2015, in North Charleston, South Carolina. | Source: Pool / Getty
President Joe Biden’s sweeping commutations on Monday for prisoners serving federal death sentences notably excluded three non-Black men, including an open white supremacist who carried out a hate-filled killing spree against nine unsuspecting parishioners at a historic Black church in South Carolina.
While Dylann Roof — who said he wanted to start a “race war” with his murderous actions — languishes ahead of his pending execution for that fateful day at Mother Emanuel AME Church in 2015, he will also be able to reflect on how Biden commuted the sentences of every single Black person serving federal death sentences and 22 others from different backgrounds. The prisoners whose federal death sentences were commuted include 15 Black people, six Latinos and one Asian, all men.
A total of 37 prisoners’ had their federal death sentences commuted.
While Biden didn’t mention the death sentence prisoners by name, he reiterated his calls for the United States to “stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” something that President-elect Donald Trump promised to resume when he takes office.
Since Roof didn’t make the cut, his exclusion from Biden’s commutations sets up the possibility of Trump, a suspected white supremacist, having his administration execute an avowed white supremacist.
Biden’s Department of Justice in 2021 placed a moratorium on federal death sentences.
He said on Monday that the commutations should not be confused for approval of the crimes, for which the convictions still stand. The only difference is that the prisoners will not be executed.
“I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Mr. Biden said.
The other two death row prisoners whose sentences were not commuted are Robert D. Bowers, the gunman in a deadly mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers whose deadly explosives were placed at the race’s finish line in 2013.
Civil rights groups hailed Biden’s commutations.
“For over fifty years the NAACP has fought for the abolishment of the death penalty. We know that Black Americans are disproportionately targeted and often wrongfully convicted to inhumane execution by the very government tasked with upholding their life and liberty,” NAACP President & CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement sent to NewsOne. “We’re proud to see the Biden-Harris administration make history by sparing the lives of these individuals and setting an important precedent in the face of rising extremist and anti-humanitarian rhetoric and policy.”
Legal Defense Fund President and Director-Counsel Janai Nelson said in a statement the “commutations are a momentous step towards redressing the death penalty’s long history of racialized, systemic violence and its inefficacy as a form of punishment.”
Both Johnson and Nelson urged Biden to make similar commutations on the state level.
“The president still has the power to commute the sentences of more than 7,000 Americans impacted by the inherently racist ‘War on Drugs.’” Johnson added.
Nelson noted that those thousands of other prisoners facing state-sanctioned executions were “incarcerated under sentences they would not receive under today’s laws, and the many other individuals who are serving unfair sentences as a result of unjust laws and practices.”
Pressure grew for the presidential commutations after Biden earlier this month pardoned his son Hunter’s federal conviction for failing to pay federal income tax and illegally possessing a weapon.
Civil rights groups, activists and advocates sent Biden multiple letters calling for the sweeping death sentence commutations, including one on behalf of more than 430 human rights groups and signed by Death Penalty Action Board Chair Rev. Sharon Risher, the daughter of Ethel Lance, who was killed by Roof in the racist mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina.
Biden has granted more commutations than any other first-term president since Richard Nixon was in the White House.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 declined to hear an appeal of Roof’s conviction, but there are still ways for him to keep the appeal process going, making it unclear when he will actually face his execution.
This is America.
SEE ALSO:
Black Death Row Prisoners Are Most Vulnerable To Suffering Botched Executions, New Study Finds
‘Continue To Fight’ For Troy Davis: Death Penalty Debate Rages Years After ‘Innocent’ Man Executed
