Commute Federal Death Row: a letter to President Biden
December 13, 2024
President Joseph R. Biden
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
Washington, DC 20500
President Biden:
It is truly a rare opportunity for one man to be able to save the lives of forty others. Luckily, our Constitution puts this great and redeeming power in the hands of you, the President of the United States. You have this unique and historic opportunity to promote human dignity, fairness, and justice. We beg you to use your power of commutation, your power of mercy, to close out your time in the presidency. Our country has had a long history of injustice which is often overlooked. This is an opportunity to be counted among those presidents that have used their power for mercy instead of violence.
Just as the president has the ability to do great mercy, the president has the power to do grave violence, even to the point of using the immense power of the United States to take the lives of specific individuals. Between 1963 and 2019, the United States government executed three people. In a six-month period at the end of the last administration, the government killed 13 human beings, three of them in a four-day period. The entire power of the United States was brought to bear upon each of those 13 people. Forty more people remain in jeopardy of having their lives ended by the government in the coming months, especially if the killing spree that ended the last administration restarts at the beginning of the next. You are the only one who has the power to save the lives of those 40 people still on death row and we beg you to use that power to prevent further human suffering.
Commuting a death sentence will not make the country less safe. The signers of this letter have seen this firsthand. The Commonwealth of Virginia killed human beings through state sanctioned violence for over 400 years. Our Commonwealth is one of the leaders in the murder of other human beings over the history of the United States; however, in 2021 we took the historic step to end the use of capital punishment. There were many reasons we did this including the financial cost of the death penalty, the severe reduction in the number of capital verdicts in recent years, and the moral weight upon the citizens of the Commonwealth when people are killed in our names. Since ending the death penalty, our Commonwealth has not been made less safe. The commutation of the remaining death sentences did not lead to an increase in capital crimes, which makes sense, because we know the death penalty does not serve any real deterrent effect. Standing up to those who will try to convince you that state sanctioned murder makes us safe will only increase your moral standing on this issue.
The death penalty has been found to be utterly arbitrary. If you were to look at all of the people convicted of killing others across all 93 federal districts since 1976, you would not find that the “worst of the worst” were given the death sentence. The difference between one case and another has more to do with who the U.S. Attorney was at the time than the facts of the actual case. The only predictor of whether a person charged with capital murder revives a death sentence is the race of the victim. Despite the reforms of 1976, the death penalty has become no less arbitrary and no more of a deterrent against crime.
Next, the fact that the federal government will use lethal injection to carry out these executions makes the risk to the 40 people facing execution even more dire. In many recent high profile attempts to carry out executions by lethal injection, there have been reports of the execution leading to great pain and torture of the person being killed. There have been attempts to execute people stopped in the middle, and those that took much longer than anticipated. A report being done in Arizona on the use of lethal injection has recently been hidden from public view, presumably because of how damning the report will be. There is no way to kill a human being that is acceptable, but certainly 40 people should not be tortured to death in our names.
Finally, the use of the death penalty is morally inadmissible. The fact that we remain one of the few countries that permits the state to kill our neighbors is a black mark on the soul of our nation and on each of us. You have this historic and unique ability to save the lives of 40 people. Certainly, if you could press a button and save 40 people from being murdered you would do so. There would be no question that it would be the ethical, moral, and obvious choice. Each of those persons on death row is a human being, and all of us, no matter what we may have done, must be treated with a basic level of dignity. Permitting the next administration to torture and kill these men is bad enough in the abstract, but it is even worse when we know that you have the immediate ability to commute these sentences.
You are the only hope to save these 40 men from death and our country from having 40 more killings marking our souls and consciousnesses. Congress will not save these men. The Supreme Court will not save these men. You are the only one who can do it. To fail to do so would be no different than authorizing the execution yourself. This is the right choice. It is the only choice. Please end your presidency by using your commutation power in the most amazing way possible. You will get some political pushback, but generations from now you will be remembered for your mercy, which can be your legacy if you save the lives of these 40 men.
We sincerely request your urgent consideration,
Justice Forward Virginia
Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
Virginia Sexual & Domestic Violence Action Alliance
Virginia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
EJUSA
Legal Aid Justice Center
The Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality
Center for Crime, Equity, and Justice
Virginia Organizing
NAACP Virginia State Conference
League of Women Voters of Virginia
RISE for Youth
Marijuana Justice
We of Action Virginia
ACLU of VA
Charlottesville Area Justice Coalition
Valley Justice Coalition of Harrisonburg
350 Alexandria
Network NOVA
Virginia Grassroots Coalition
Fairfax Grassroots
Virginia Justice Alliance
Abolish Slavery Virginia
Nolef Turns Inc.
Institute of Forgiveness
Lending Hands
Williamsburg-James City County Coalition for Community Justice
New Virginia Majority
Progressive Democrats of America-Virginia
Neighborhood Resource Center
Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project
Prisoners Rights Clinic, Inc.
Coalition for Justice
Virginia Prison Justice Network
SERV at UVA
Activate Virginia
Virginia Prisons Accountability Committee
I Vote For Me
Social Action Linking Together
Cornelius Corps Inc.
Humanities Behind Bars
Sistas in Prison Reform
Richmond for All
Interfaith Action for Human Rights
Voice of the Experienced
Pretrial Justice Institute
Restorative Arlington