President Biden gave commutations of sentences to 37 people on federal death row Monday.
Those who received the Monday commutations of their sentences saw them go from execution to life with no possibility of parole. However, three “hard cases” were not among the commutations.
Biden, while announcing the commutations, said that he is “more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”
Here are the three death row inmates that weren’t on the president’s commutations list:
Robert D. Bowers
Bowers is the gunman behind the deadly 2018 antisemitic Tree of Life synagogue attack, which killed 11 people in Pittsburgh. In June 2023, Bowers was found guilty of 63 felony charges, including federal hate crime charges. Twenty-two of the charges, including 11 counts of obstructing free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death and 11 hate crimes resulting in death, carried the death penalty.
Bowers told the police at the scene of the Tree of Life shooting that “all Jews must die” and has expressed pride in his actions.
In August 2023, a jury recommended the death penalty for Bowers, and a judge later sentenced Bowers to death a day later.
Dylann Roof
In 2015, Roof opened fire on members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., murdering nine people at the Black church. The self-proclaimed white supremacist was found guilty on 33 federal charges in 2017 and sentenced to death for the racist slaying, which he wished would start a race war.
Roof was the first person in U.S. history to be sentenced to death for a federal hate crime.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
Tsarnaev was one of the brothers behind the Boston Marathon bombings in the spring of 2013.
Tsarnaev, alongside his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, set off homemade pressure cooker bombs close to the finish line of the Boston Marathon, which resulted in the injuring of some 260 people and the deaths of three, including an 8-year-old. In an ensuing manhunt, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed.
Following a trial in 2015, Tsarnaev was convicted of 30 charges including the use of a weapon of mass destruction. A jury also gave him a death sentence, which he appealed.
In 2020, the U.S Court of Appeals in Boston agreed to overturn Tsarnaev’s death sentence, with the Supreme Court reinstating his death penalty in 2022.
