Rights Groups Urge President Biden to Commute Federal Death Row

President Joseph Biden 
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. 
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Biden,

On behalf of the 134 undersigned civil liberties, civil and human rights, faith-based, academic, and social justice organizations, we write to urge you to use your constitutionally provided power to commute the sentences of all individuals on federal death row. We commend your administration’s actions to repudiate capital punishment, including imposing a moratorium on executions for those sentenced to death, and for publicly calling for an end to the use of the death penalty during your 2020 campaign.[1] In the face of a second Trump administration, more is necessary.

Forty people are currently on federal death row. Over half of those individuals are non-white, including 38% who are Black, despite Black adults representing 11.7% of the population.[2] The federal death penalty is not immune from the hallmark irreparable failures of the death penalty at the state level.[3] Indeed, the nation bore witness to thirteen executions in the final seven months of the first Trump administration, all of& which were marred with devastating issues endemic to capital punishment like racial bias, ineffective legal assistance, unreliable forensic evidence, and defendants executed who had substantial intellectual disabilities and severe mental health conditions.[4]

From the first day of your presidency, you issued a clear commitment to address racial equity for underserved communities.[5] As your time in office comes to a close, there is an unprecedented need for you to cement your commitment to remedying injustices by exercising executive clemency and commuting the death sentences of those on federal death row. President Trump executed more people than the previous ten administrations combined.[6] Of those he executed, over half were people of color: six Black men and one Native American. The only irreversible action you can take to prevent President-elect Trump from renewing his execution spree, as he has vowed to do, is commuting the death sentences of those on federal death row now. Your ability to change the course of the death penalty in the United States will be a defining, legacy-building moment in American history. You have the power to lead with redemption and time is of the essence.

Historically, in the United States the death penalty has been rooted in slavery, lynchings, and white vigilantism.[7] In 1944, South Carolina executed a 14-year old Black child, George Stinney for the rape and murder of two white young girls who never returned home on a day he had seen them.[8] Mr. Stinney’s attorney had no experience in capital cases and did not call any witnesses.[9] He was convicted by an all-white jury.[10] In 2014, 80 years later, a judge vacated Mr. Stinney’s capital conviction as he was deprived of due process during his trial.[11] While George Stinney is the youngest person known to be executed by a government in U.S. history, this heart-wrenching case bears emblematic commonalities of how the death penalty has been used as a tool of racial oppression against Black men and Black communities.

Today, people of color, particularly Black men, continue to disproportionately face the death penalty. Studies reveal that racial discrimination permeates every stage of the criminal justice process— from policing and charging decisions to jury selection, trial proceedings, sentencing and ultimately who is executed.[12] A 2018 study found that the requirement that prospective jurors be willing to vote for a death sentence, likely disproportionately excludes Black people from serving on juries in capital cases, depriving Black defendants a jury of their peers.[13] Study after study has identified that if a victim is white there is an increased likelihood a defendant will be sentenced to death. A 2022 study that reviewed murder cases from Georgia observed that when a Black defendant is accused of killing white victims, cases are 25% more likely to receive a death sentence than all other race combinations.[14] A 1990 review by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that Black defendants face harsher penalties than their similarly situated non-Black counterparts, and defendants whose victims are white are treated more punitively than those whose victims are Black.[15] More than a third of the people who have been executed since 1976 are Black.[16] The United Nations Human Rights Committee has repeatedly expressed concern about the use of the death penalty in the United States and the racial justice implications, recently stating “the Committee remains gravely concerned at the continuing use of the death penalty and at racial disparities in its imposition.”[17]

There are Black men on federal death row today who were sentenced and convicted by all-white juries, despite the offense taking place in areas with significant populations of people of color.[18] Since 1989, 60% of all people federally sentenced to death have been people of color.[19] In short, so long as the United States maintains the death penalty, this country will never achieve true racial equity. The continued use of the death penalty in the United States represents an indelible stain on the moral fabric of our country, and a barrier to achieving racial justice. While the majority of countries have abolished capital punishment, those that retain it wield it disproportionately against racially, religiously, and politically marginalized groups.[20] The U.S. is no exception.

Further, the death penalty does not advance public safety. Arguments that the death penalty is a necessary deterrent ring false. In 2020, state with the death penalty had higher murder rates than those without – states with the death penalty had an average murder rate of 7.5 per 100,000, whereas states without the death penalty had murder rates of 5.3 per 100,000.[21] Law enforcement officals agree. In a national opinion poll of police chiefts across the United States, the use of the death penalty ranked last as an effective way to keep communities safe.[22]

We have seen time and time again cases where state and federal governments have made grave – and even fatal – mistakes with wrongful convictions. Since 1973, at least 200 people have been exonerated from death rows across the United States.[23]The vast majority of those who were wrongfully convicted to die, often spending decades on death row, are Black and Brown people.[24] This disturbing realization about the fallibility of the capital punishment system and who it targets begs further questions about those who were innocent and executed and lost to history through grave injustices that we cannot reverse.[25]

President Biden, by commuting the sentences of those on death row, you have the opportunity to bring the United States closer in line with the nearly two thirds of countries that have fully abolished the use of capital punishment. Now is the moment for us all to reflect on what a higher sense of morality and duty calls upon us to do. We urge you to commute the sentences of those on death row prior to the end of your term.

Should you have any questions please feel free to contact Tara Stutsman of the American Civil Liberties Union at tstustman@aclu.org, Aiden Cotter of the Southern Poverty Law Center at aiden.cotter@splcenter.org, Justin Mazzola of Amnesty International USA at jmazzola@aiusa.org, or Kristina Roth of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund at kroth@naacpldf.org.

Sincerely,

American Civil Liberties Union

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) 

8th Amendment Project 

ACT 4 SA Action Fund 

Alaskans Against a Death Penalty

American Friends Service Committee

Atlanta Community Support Project 

Barred Business

Brennan Center for Justice

California Public Defenders Association

Center for American Progress

Center for Law, Equity and Race at Northeastern 

Color of Change 

Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice 

Conservatives Concerned Courage California

Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona

Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund 

Drug Policy Alliance

Ella Baker Center for Human Rights 

Episcopal Peace Fellowship

Equity in Education

Fair Chance Project ~ Families United to End LWOP (FUEL) 

Felony Murder Elimination Project 

Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty 

Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, UC Irvine School of Law 

Full Picture Justice 

FWD.us

Gibson-Banks Center for Race and the Law, University of Maryland Carey School of Law 

Ignite Peace

JLUSA

Justice Roundtable

Juvenile Law Center

Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty 

LatinoJustice PRLDEF

Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area 

Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent 

MomsRising.org 

Movement for Black Lives

Muslim Advocates

National Association of Social Workers

National Black Justice Collective 

National Lawyers Guild

National Urban League

Nevada Coalition Against the Death Penalty 

Next Generation Action Network

Ohio Council of Churches

Ohioans to Stop Executions

Oklahoma Faith Network 

Operation Restoration

Oregonians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty 

Presenting Resources Effectively Applying Christlike Humbleness (PREACH) 

Promise of Justice Initiative 

Restoring Hope California 

Sisters of St. Joseph of Baden, PA 

Sisters of St. Joseph of Northwestern PA 

South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty 

State Voices Florida 

Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (TADP) 

Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP) 

Texas Jail Project

The Faith Leaders of Color Coalition (FLOCC)

The Sentencing Project

Union for Reform Judaism

U.S. Federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph

Vera Institute of Justice

Witness To Innocence

Young Women's Freedom Center