On December 23, 2024, President Joe Biden commuted 37 federal death sentences to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, representing the largest number of death sentences commuted by any President in the modern era.

YOUR ACTIONS mattered in achieving this result. Thank you!

Calls for President Biden to act had been growing as letters from hundreds of individuals and groups, including TADP and other state advocates, business leaders, Black pastors, Catholics, innocence organizations, prosecutors, former judges, mental health and intellectual disability advocates, victim family members, were made public, stressing concerns about the federal death penalty system that warranted commutations.

This decision means that no federal prisoner will be at imminent risk of execution under the incoming administration. During President-elect Trump’s first term, the federal government carried out 13 executions in a seven-month period, an unprecedented number and pace.

A majority of those executed during this execution spree were people of color, while several had claims of intellectual disability, severe mental illness, racial bias, prosecutorial misconduct, and other serious problems in their cases.

The cases of those whose sentences were commuted reflect many of these same problems, and much like the cases of those executed, the courts have been unable or unwilling to address those problems.

“This is a historic day,” said Martin Luther King, III, who publicly urged the President to commute the federal death row. “By commuting these sentences, President Biden has done what no President before him was willing to do: take meaningful and lasting action not just to acknowledge the death penalty’s racist roots but also to remedy its persistent unfairness.”

Today is another historic day as we celebrate Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and inaugurate a new president. But it is also a day that raises concerns for many of us. We are concerned about the future of our democracy, the growing divide between the haves and the have nots, the climate crisis, and the epidemic of gun violence, among many other things. We may feel disillusioned and powerless as we take stock of all that we face. The challenges seem too great.

Celebrating Dr. King today is a antidote to that disillusionment and powerlessness. This day we celebrate knowing that our nation has faced hard times before. Dr. King’s own life and death remind us of the risk we take when we follow his example to stand for justice as well as what we can achieve.

Because we did not give up or give in, President Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 men. They will live because our collective action mattered. It happened because we made it happen. And, we will keep acting and speaking and marching and voting and praying and singing and whatever we must to ensure that Dr. King’s legacy endures–with justice rolling down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream–no matter how long it takes or how hard the journey is.

Friends, never underestimate what we can do together.

Photo: Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1929 – 1968) holds a press conference at the Savoy Hotel in London, UK, September 1964. (Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)