Democrats on Capitol Hill are begging President Joe Biden, set to leave office next month, to commute the death sentences of 40 federal inmates, including one of the Boston Marathon bombers, child killers, mass shooters, and those convicted for brutally murdering women.
“Today, on human rights day, we call on President Biden to do the right thing — to use his clemency authority to commute the death sentences of the 40 individuals on death row, to resentence them to a prison term, and to save lives,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) said at a press conference.
“State-sanctioned murder is not justice,” Pressley continued. “The death penalty is a cruel, racist fundamentally flawed punishment that has no place in our society.”
Pressley also accused the first administration of President-elect Donald Trump of going on an “execution spree” for carrying out the death sentences of those sitting on death row in federal prison.
Similarly, Rep. Cori Bush (R-MO) called the death penalty “a barbaric, inhumane practice most often weaponized against the most vulnerable among us” because “the overwhelming majority of people on death row are black and brown.”
“President Biden has the power to save lives,” Bush said.
Among the death sentences that Pressley and Bush are asking Biden to commute are those of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of helping carry out the Boston Marathon bombing terrorist attack that killed three people; Daniel Troya, convicted of drug-related killings of a family including two children; Marvin Gabrion, convicted of kidnapping and murdering 19-year-old Rachel Timmerman; Robert Bowers, convicted of murdering 11 Jewish Americans in a Pennsylvania synagogue; and Brandon Basham, convicted of raping and murdering 44-year-old Alice Donovan, among others.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.