COLUMBIA, South Carolina (AP) — Victims’ families and others affected by crimes that resulted in federal death row convictions shared a range of emotions on Monday, from relief to anger, after President Joe Biden commuted dozens of the sentences.
Biden converted the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The inmates include people who were convicted in the slayings of police, military officers and federal prisoners and guards. Others were involved in deadly robberies and drug deals.
Three inmates will remain on federal death row: Dylann Roof, convicted of the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; the 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.
Opponents of the death penalty lauded Biden for a decision they’d long sought. Supporters of Donald Trump, a vocal advocate of expanding capital punishment, criticized the move as an assault to common decency just weeks before the president-elect takes office.
Victims’ families and former colleagues share relief and anger
Donnie Oliverio, a retired Ohio police officer whose partner, Bryan Hurst, was killed by an inmate whose death sentence was commuted, said the execution of “the person who killed my police partner and best friend would have brought me no peace.”
“The president has done what is right here,” Oliverio said in a statement also issued by the White House.
But Hurst’s widow, Marissa Gibson, called Biden’s commutation distressing and a “complete dismissal and undermining of the federal justice system,” in a statement to The Columbus Dispatch.
Heather Turner, whose mother, Donna Major, was killed in a 2017 South Carolina bank robbery, called the commutation of the killer’s sentence a “clear gross abuse of power” in a Facebook post, adding the weeks she spent in court with the hope of justice “just a waste of time.”
“At no point did the president consider the victims,” Turner wrote. “He, and his supporters, have blood on their hands.”
Decision to leave Roof on death row met with conflicting emotions
There has always been a broad range of opinions on what punishment Roof should face from the families of the nine people killed and the survivors of the massacre at the Mother Emanuel AME Church. Many forgave him, but some say they can’t forget and their forgiveness doesn’t mean they don’t want to see him put to death for what he did.
Felicia Sanders survived the shooting shielding her granddaughter while watching Roof kill her son, Tywanza, and her aunt, Susie Jackson. Sanders brought her bullet-torn bloodstained Bible to his sentencing and said then she can’t even close her eyes to pray because Roof started firing during the closing prayer of Bible study that night.
In a text message to her lawyer, Andy Savage, Sanders called Biden’s decision to not spare Roof’s life a wonderful Christmas gift.
Michael Graham, whose sister, Cynthia Hurd, was killed, told The Associated Press that Roof’s lack of remorse and simmering white nationalism in the country means he is the kind of dangerous and evil person the death penalty is intended for.
“This was a crime against a race of people,” Graham said. “It didn’t matter who was there, only that they were Black.”
But the Rev. Sharon Richer, who was Tywanza Sanders’ cousin and whose mother, Ethel Lance, was killed, criticized Biden for not sparing Roof and clearing out all of death row. She said every time Roof’s case comes up through numerous appeals it is like reliving the massacre all over again.
“I need the President to understand that when you put a killer on death row, you also put their victims’ families in limbo with the false promise that we must wait until there is an execution before we can begin to heal,” Richer said in a statement.
Richer, a board member of Death Penalty Action, which seeks to abolish capital punishment, was driven to tears by conflicting emotions during a Zoom news conference Monday.
“The families are left to be hostages for the years and years of appeals that are to come,” Richer said. “I’ve got to stay away from the news today. I’ve got to turn the TV off — because whose face am I going to see?”
Biden is giving more attention to the three inmates he chose not to spare, something they all wanted as a part of what drove them to kill, said Abraham Bonowitz, Death Penalty Action’s executive director.
“These three racists and terrorists who have been left on death row came to their crimes from political motivations. When Donald Trump gets to execute them what will really be happening is they will be given a global platform for their agenda of hatred,” Bonowitz said.
Politicians and advocacy groups speak up
Biden had faced pressure from advocacy organizations to commute federal death sentences, and several praised him for taking action in his final month in office.
Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, said in a statement that Biden “has shown our country — and the rest of the world — that the brutal and inhumane policies of our past do not belong in our future.”
Republicans, including Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, on the other hand, criticized the move — and argued its moral ground was shaky given the three exceptions.
“Once again, Democrats side with depraved criminals over their victims, public order, and common decency,” Cotton wrote on X. “Democrats can’t even defend Biden’s outrageous decision as some kind of principled, across-the-board opposition to the death penalty since he didn’t commute the three most politically toxic cases.”
Liz Murrill, Louisiana’s Republican attorney general, criticized the commuted sentence of Len Davis, a former New Orleans policeman convicted of orchestrating the killing of a woman who had filed a complaint against him.
“We can’t trust the Feds to get justice for victims of heinous crimes, so it’s long past time for the state to get it done,” the tough-on-crime Republican said in a written statement to the AP.
One inmate’s attorney expresses thanks — and his remorse
Two men whose sentences were commuted were Norris Holder and Billie Jerome Allen, on death row for opening fire with assault rifles during a 1997 bank robbery in St. Louis, killing a guard, 46-year-old Richard Heflin.
Holder’s attorney, Madeline Cohen, said in an email that Holder, who is Black, was sentenced to death by an all-white jury. She said his case “reflects many of the system’s flaws,” and thanked Biden for commuting his sentence.
“Norris’ case exemplifies the racial bias and arbitrariness that led the President to commute federal death sentences,” Cohen said. “Norris has always been deeply remorseful for the pain his actions caused, and we hope this decision brings some measure of closure to Richard Heflin’s family.”
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Swenson reported from Seattle. Associated Press writers Jim Salter in O’Fallon, Missouri, and Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed to this report.
