Commutations of death row inmates –
Donald Trump castigates Joe Biden's clemency
The future American president criticizes on Truth Social the decision of his predecessor, which changed the sentence of 37 out of 40 condemned to death.
Published today at 3:52 p.m.
“Joe Biden has just commuted the death sentences of 37 of the worst killers in our country,” Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Rebecca Noble/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/Getty Images via AFP
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Donald Trump on Tuesday castigated Joe Biden's decision to commute the sentences of 37 death row prisoners by American federal justice a few weeks before the transfer of power between the Democrat and the Republican, a fervent supporter of capital punishment.
“Joe Biden just commuted the death sentences of 37 of the worst killers in our country. When you hear the actions committed by everyone, you will not believe that he did this,” the Republican wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“It doesn’t make any sense. Relatives and friends (of the victims) are even more devastated. They can’t believe what’s happening!” he added.
Largest number of switches
Donald Trump was reacting to the announcement the day before of his successor and now future predecessor, who decided to commute the sentences of 37 of the 40 sentenced to death by federal justice.
This is “the largest number of death sentence commutations by an American president in modern times”, underlined human rights organizations, mobilized for weeks to convince Joe Biden. They feared a wave of executions when Donald Trump returned to the White House on January 20.
Because the Republican is a fervent supporter of the death penalty.
Last executions under Trump
During his victorious campaign, Donald Trump called for extending its scope, in particular to immigrants convicted of murdering American citizens or to drug and human traffickers.
The last federal executions took place at the end of the Trump presidency. After 17 years of interruption, 13 convicts were put to death between July 14, 2020 and January 16, 2021, “more than the ten previous administrations combined”, recalled the organizations.
Of some 2,300 prisoners on death row in the United States, only 40 were sentenced by federal justice until the clemency measure taken by Joe Biden. The Democrat excluded three perpetrators of attacks from his measure, including Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the bombers of the attack on the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013.
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