WASHINGTON, D.C. – Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, issued this statement in response to the announcement that President Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 individuals on the federal death row.
“We applaud President Biden’s decision to commute the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row. This action was called for by the Lawyers’ Committee and many allied organizations.
The death penalty is fraught with racial discrimination at every level. This is not a new problem. Historically, the imposition of the death penalty has been intertwined with the history of slavery and lynchings in the United States. The disparities continue to this day. According to the Death Penalty Information Center’s analysis of data from this year, nearly half of the people executed and over half of people newly sentenced to death are people of color.
Moreover, there are serious concerns about the death penalty’s unfairness and the risk of executing innocent people. In the past 50 years, at least 200 people on federal and state death row have been exonerated. In recognition of these fundamental issues with the death penalty, presidents of both major political parties had largely stopped executing people on federal death row until a sharp increase in executions during the last administration.
President Biden’s action today comes on the heels of his decision to commute the sentences of nearly 1,500 people who had been reintegrating into their communities while serving their sentences at home for at least one year under the CARES Act. These are important steps in the right direction.
Still, much more must be done to make America’s criminal justice system actually just. Many more people deserving of clemency remain behind bars, including those still serving unfairly long sentences due to the continued disparities in sentencing for those convicted of crimes involving crack cocaine compared to powder cocaine–a distinction widely understood to trigger dire racial disparities. Moreover, Black and Brown people continue to be disproportionately surveilled, arrested, and prosecuted by a system that seems oftentimes to be rigged against them.
We urge President Biden to use his authority to right more of these wrongs before he leaves office.”
###
