In one of his last major moves before leaving office, President Biden on Friday announced commuting the sentences of about 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug crimes.
Biden said in a statement Friday that those who received commutations “are serving sentences that are disproportionately long compared to what they would receive today under current laws, policies, and practices.”
“Today's clemency action provides relief to individuals who received long sentences under outdated sentencing enhancements for drug crimes that have challenged the distinction between crack and powder cocaine,” Biden said.
The move makes him the president who has issued more pardons and commutations than any other U.S. president, Biden said.
The president said Congress in recent years passed the Fair Sentencing Act in 2010, which repealed the five-year minimum sentence for crack cocaine possession, and the First Step Act, aimed at reducing the federal prison population in 2018. He mentioned that it had been passed.
“Now is the time to equalize these sentencing disparities, as Congress recognized through the Fair Sentencing Act and the First Step Act,” Biden said. “This action is an important step toward righting historic wrongs, closing sentencing disparities, and providing opportunities for deserving individuals to return to their families and communities after spending too much time in prison. ”
He is proud of his clemency record and said he will “continue to consider additional commutations and pardons” before leaving office on Monday.
The president is under pressure to pardon more people after pardoning his son Hunter Biden.
Last month, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 people on federal death row, all but three of them. Prisoners whose sentences were commuted were classified from death penalty to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Those still at risk of execution include Robert D. Bowers, who shot at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, and Robert D. Dylann Roof, the man who fired the gun, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the death row inmates. The two brothers who carried out the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.
These commutations were met with a chorus of supporters, particularly criminal justice groups opposed to the death penalty and defending the Catholic Church, and critics, including Republican lawmakers. Biden made this move in part because he believes the Trump administration will resume executions, which had been paused under his watch.
