The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on December 9 launched a campaign urging Catholics to contact outgoing President Joe Biden and ask him to commute the death sentences of the 40 men currently on federal death row to life in prison.
“President Biden has an extraordinary opportunity to advance the cause of human dignity by commuting all federal death sentences to terms of imprisonment and sparing the lives of the 40 men currently on federal death row,” the bishops wrote on a webpage that provides a contact form for Biden.
The bishops of the United States have, as a body, been calling for an end to the federal death penalty since 1980 when they released a statement calling for its abolition, just a few years after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed executions to resume in the country. Biden, a Catholic, called for an end to the use of the federal death penalty as a candidate for president, but that marked a departure from his previous political positions and actions.
The federal death penalty has been applied relatively sparingly since being reinstated in 1988. Just 16 people have been put to death by the federal government — 13 during the first Trump administration — compared with nearly 1,600 by the states.
In their 1980 statement, the U.S. bishops “outlined concerns with the death penalty that remain relevant today,” the petition page notes, including that the death penalty “extinguishes possibilities for reform and rehabilitation; the imposition of capital punishment involves the possibility of mistakes; the legal imposition of capital punishment in our society involves long and unavoidable delays; carrying out the death penalty brings with it great and avoidable anguish for everyone involved; and that capital punishment is carried out in an unfair and discriminatory manner.”
The USCCB petition follows a similar call last month from Catholic Mobilizing Network (CMN), an advocacy group that opposes the death penalty, which urged Biden to commute the sentences before leaving office in light of the upcoming jubilee year in the Catholic Church.
This is not the first time in recent years that the bishops have called for an end to the federal death penalty. In 2021, in the face of a rising number of federal executions taking place, the bishops called for an end to the federal death penalty and for Biden to commute federal death sentences to terms of imprisonment.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, reflecting a 2018 update promulgated by Pope Francis, describes the death penalty as “inadmissible” and an “attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person” (No. 2267).
The context for the bishops’ most recent petition is the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who strongly favors capital punishment and previously oversaw the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which resumed federal executions after a hiatus of more than 15 years, a decision that led to an outcry from many Catholics including the U.S. bishops.
All told, 13 inmates were executed in the final six months of Trump’s first term, including Lisa Montgomery, who murdered Bobbie Jo Stinnett in Missouri in 2004 in order to steal her unborn baby. Montgomery was the first woman to be executed by the federal government in nearly 70 years.
In July 2021, after Biden took office, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a moratorium on federal executions while the Department of Justice conducted a review of its policies and procedures to ensure the death penalty is being applied “fairly and humanely.”
Despite overseeing the halting of new executions, the Biden administration has sought to uphold the death sentences of several prisoners already convicted, including the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber.
The Biden administration also pursued the death penalty for the 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue shooter, who was handed a capital sentence in 2023. The administration is also still actively pursuing the death penalty for Payton Gendron, the then-18-year-old man who in 2022 killed nearly a dozen Black shoppers at a Tops Friendly Market grocery store in Buffalo, New York. His trial is expected to take place during the next Trump administration.
