President Biden has spared the lives of 37 men on federal death row. Earlier today, Biden commuted their sentences to life without parole, just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House. In a statement, Biden said, “I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.” Bryan Stevenson, the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, praised Biden’s decision, calling it “an important turning point in ending America’s tragic and error-prone use of the death penalty.”

Biden did not commute the sentences of three men on federal death row: Dylann Roof, who killed nine Black parishioners at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who attacked Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, killing 11 congregants in the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.