CNN
—

President Joe Biden announced Monday that he is moving 37 people off federal death row to serve life sentences behind bars — a decision that leaves just three federal prisoners awaiting execution when President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month.

“Today I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row to life in prison without the possibility of parole,” Biden announced in a statement released Monday.

In particular, the president did not commute the sentences of three people whose crimes included mass shootings or terrorist attacks: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of two brothers responsible for the deadly Boston Marathon bombing in 2013; Dylann Roof, a white nationalist who massacred nine people at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.

“These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my administration has placed on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,” Biden said, referring to his Justice Department’s halt to federal executions.

The majority of the 37 people whose sentences were commuted Monday were convicted of less publicized crimes, such as drug-trafficking-related murders or the killings of prison guards or other inmates.

“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, mourn the victims of their heinous acts, and mourn all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in his statement. “But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice president and now president, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.” I cannot in good conscience allow that a new government resumes the executions I stopped.”

The move comes as death penalty opponents prepare for Trump’s return to the White House. During the 2024 campaign, Trump indicated that he would resume federal executions and work to expand the range of crimes punishable under federal law, which generally provides for the death penalty in cases of murder, espionage and treason Death penalty is possible.

Biden’s announcement also comes after he pardoned his son Hunter Biden for federal tax and gun convictions this month, and the White House said more clemency and commutation announcements were forthcoming. President Biden also granted clemency to about 1,500 people this month, the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history.

Death penalty opponents and top Biden allies such as Senator Chris Coons had encouraged the president to consider commuting the death penalty at the federal level.

“President Biden has a chance to make history by addressing the racist and unjust federal death penalty system and fulfilling an early campaign promise he made to the American people,” Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said this month After the ACLU and more than 130 other civil and human rights organizations sent Biden a letter urging him to commute the sentences of those on death row.

Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, told CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday that Biden should consider the conversions “on a case-by-case basis.”

“There are some real questions about the justice and process of the death penalty in the United States. And I don’t know what President Biden will ultimately do, but I think there are reasons – both in terms of racial justice, due process and what we say about our values ​​at home and in the world as we move forward and “To kill all of these people instead of letting them spend the rest of their lives in prison,” Coons said in “State of the Union.”

Biden campaigned on abolishing the federal death penalty in 2020 and imposed a moratorium on federal executions early in his presidency while the Justice Department reviewed the practice. Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, has not sought the death penalty in any new cases, although the Justice Department continues to support death sentences for some federal defendants, including Tsarnaev and Roof.

Outside the federal system, there are over 2,000 people in the United States who have been convicted in state courts and placed on death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Biden has no power to stop these death sentences.

Opponents fear Trump’s return to the White House will usher in a new round of federal executions reminiscent of the final months of the president-elect’s first term. Thirteen people were executed in the final seven months of Trump’s first term after then-Attorney General Bill Barr revived the practice after a 17-year hiatus.

Trump has expressed support for imposing the death penalty on convicted human traffickers and drug dealers, while saying he would support prosecutors pursuing the death penalty for migrants who kill American citizens or anyone who kills a law enforcement officer.

While the Justice Department under Trump could seek the death penalty again in future cases, it cannot reverse commutations issued by Biden.

CNN’s Dakin Andone contributed to this report.