Joe Biden commutes sentences of 37 federal death row inmates to life in prison
ABCUnited States President Joe Biden has commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 inmates on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment, just weeks before Donald Trump, an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment, takes office. While running for president in 2020, Mr Biden's campaign website said he would "work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivise states to follow the federal government's example". Speculation that Mr Biden could commute federal death sentences had intensified last week after the White House announced he plans to visit Italy on the final foreign trip of his presidency next month. Martin Luther King III, who publicly urged Mr Biden to change the death sentences, said in a statement issued by the White House that the president "has done what no president before him was willing to do: take meaningful and lasting action not just to acknowledge the death penalty's racist roots but also to remedy its persistent unfairness".