Durbin Applauds President Biden's Commutations Of Most Federal Death Sentences To Life Imprisonments
CHICAGO – U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today released the following statement applauding President Biden for commuting the sentences of most individuals currently on federal death row to life imprisonment. In November, Durbin led 12 Senators in a letter to President Biden calling on him to review the cases of all individuals currently on federal death row and commute to life imprisonment the sentences of all individuals he considers appropriate before the conclusion of his term.
“The President’s decision today provides accountability with a term of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and ensures that these individuals never again pose a threat to public safety, but without implicating the myriad issues associated with capital punishment. I have long advocated for the abolition of the federal death penalty and commend President Biden for this act of justice and mercy and for his leadership.”
Durbin is the lead sponsor of the Federal Death Penalty Prohibition Act, bicameral legislation to prohibit the use of the death penalty at the federal level and require re-sentencing of those currently on death row. The legislation was originally introduced by Durbin and U.S. Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-MA-07) in July 2019 following the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) announcement that it would resume the use of the death penalty.
In July 2020, the Trump Administration ended a 17-year hiatus on federal executions when it executed Daniel Lewis Lee, and followed that with six more executions between July 16, 2020, and September 24, 2020. After his defeat at the polls in the November 2020 election, then-President Trump and political appointees at DOJ ramped up the pace of executions during the lame duck period of his presidency. In December 2020, Durbin led a letter to the DOJ Inspector General seeking an investigation of the frenzied and unprecedented “spree of federal executions during [President Trump’s] lame-duck period.”
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