Trump pledges to bring back federal executions after Biden commutes death sentences for 37 inmates

President-elect Trump on Monday pledged to seek the death penalty for certain federal criminal defendants, days after President Biden controversially commuted the death sentences for 37 inmates. 

Biden's move to reclassify the death sentences to life without the possibility of parole was heavily criticized by Republicans and many Democrats. 

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President-elect Donald Trump points at AmericaFest, Sunday, Dec. 22, 2024, in Phoenix. On Monday, Trump pledged to have the Justice Department pursue the death penalty following President Biden's move to commute death sentences for 37 inmates.  (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri)

"As soon as I am inaugurated, I will direct the Justice Department to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. We will be a Nation of Law and Order again!"

In his message announcing the move, the White House said Biden's actions would prevent the incoming Trump administration from "carrying out the execution sentences that would not be handed down under current policy and practice."

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Only three men on federal death row failed to meet Biden's requirements for having their sentences commuted. 

They are: Robert Bowers, the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter who killed 11 people in 2018; Dylann Roof, a White supremacist who killed nine Black parishioners at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who worked with his now-dead brother to carry out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds. 

Trump spokesman Steven Chueng on Monday said Biden's action was a "a slap in the face to the victims, their families, and their loved ones."

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During Trump's first term, 13 federal prisoners were put to death, the most under any president in a century. Upon taking office in 2021, Biden declared a moratorium on federal executions.