Biden considering commuting sentences of those on death row: report

President Joe Biden is reportedly considering commuting the sentences of the 40 men on death row, sources told The Wall Street Journal. 

Civil rights groups and religious organizations have been pressing the president to do this before Christmas. A spokesperson for the White House said a final decision has not been made.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has recommended that Biden commute only some of the sentences, not all of them, according to the outlet.

The 40 men are the total number of people on the federal government's death row. All have been convicted of murder, and any of them whose sentence is commuted will get life without parole. 

Biden campaigned in 2020 for the abolition of the federal death penalty, and no executions have been carried out since he was elected.

Those who would not be pardoned would be those who either committed hate crimes or terrorism.

Some of the individuals who are on death row include Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was convicted in the Boston Marathon bombing, which resulted in three dead and more than 250 injured, Dylann Roof who killed nine people at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina and Robert Bowers who killed 11 people in the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., spoke out against commuting the sentences. 

“It would mean that progressive politics is more important to the president than the lives taken by these murderers,” he said during a speech Wednesday.