Biden Could Block Another Trump Execution Spree With The Stroke Of A Pen

Biden is facing calls from lawmakers, activists, those condemned to die and even some victims' family members to use his clemency power to empty federal death row.

During his final six months as president, Donald Trump’s administration carried out an unprecedented execution spree, killing 13 people. When President Joe Biden replaced Trump in 2021, he became the first U.S. president to publicly oppose the death penalty. He pledged to work with Congress to abolish the federal death penalty and called for those on death row to instead serve sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

But over the past four years, Biden has made no apparent effort to whip up support for legislation to abolish the death penalty that has languished in Congress. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has pursued new death verdicts and aggressively defended existing death sentences — including cases riddled with the same issues the Biden administration has cited as reasons to end the practice. As it stands, there are 40 people on federal death row, many of whom have exhausted their appeals and face possible execution by the incoming Trump administration, which, according to the right-wing Project 2025 policy document, plans to execute every death row prisoner.

With the stroke of a pen, Biden could commute every federal death sentence to life in prison and block the incoming Trump administration from carrying out its stated mass killing agenda. Now in his final weeks in office, Biden faces mounting calls from lawmakers, activists, faith leaders and those condemned to die to take action before it’s too late. Even some victims’ family members, former corrections officials, prosecutors and retired judges have urged the president to empty the federal death row.

“If I was lucky enough to be able to advise [Biden], I would tell him that it is completely consistent with respect for the Department [of Justice] for him to take a second look at those decisions and to make a statement about what it means to have the state kill people,” Rachel Barkow, a professor at New York University School of Law and a former member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, said in an interview.

“I have no doubt in my mind how history will judge the death penalty,” Barkow said.