Future US President Donald Trump has criticized the decision of office holder Joe Biden, just before the end of his term, to convert the death sentences of a total of 37 people into life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Biden had converted the death sentences of “37 of the worst murderers in our country”, Trump wrote on his short news service Truth Social on Tuesday. “When you hear the story of each one, you won’t believe he did it.” The decision makes no sense. “Relatives and friends are still devastated, they can’t believe this is happening”, Trump said.
Biden had said on Monday that the conversions were in line with the moratorium his government had imposed on federal executions, unless it was a case of terrorism and hate-motivated mass murders.
Although he condemned the perpetrators, mourned the victims of their heinous crimes, and mourned all the families that had suffered an unimaginable and irreparable loss, “guided by my conscience and my experience as a duty defender, chairman of the Senate’s Justice Committee, vice president, and now president, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the application of the death penalty at the federal level”, Biden added. He could not in good conscience stand by and watch a new government resume executions that he had stopped.
37 of the total 40 federal prisoners sentenced to death are affected by the decision, with Biden excluding the possibility of conversion for three of the prisoners. Trump is a strong supporter of the death penalty: during his first term, 13 federal executions were carried out.