WASHINGTON — A coalition of civil rights groups, faith leaders, business executives, relatives of murder victims and law enforcement veterans urged President Joe Biden this week to commute the federal death sentences of the 40 people currently on death row before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

What You Need To Know

  • A defense official says the Defense Department will appeal a military judge’s ruling that plea agreements struck by the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and two of his co-defendants are valid
  • The judge’s ruling this past week had voided Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s order to throw out the deals
  • The judge concluded that the plea agreements were valid and he granted the three motions to enter guilty pleas
  • The defense official says the U.S. will also seek a postponement of any hearing on the pleas

The push comes with a little more than a month left in Biden’s term and as he considers pardons and commutations in the aftermath of pardoning his son Hunter Biden earlier this month. It also follows calls from Pope Francis and Democratic lawmakers urging Biden, a Catholic who campaigned on opposing capital punishment, to do the same.

Trump has promised to wield the death penalty far more liberally than any president in modern U.S. history, specifically arguing that drug dealers should be eligible for the fatal punishment. In the final six months of his first term, Trump oversaw the executions of 13 people. Only three others had been executed by the federal government since 1963, all during President George W. Bush’ first term.

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden’s “view has not changed on” the death penalty but declined to go into more detail on the president’s consideration of death row inmates.

“Certainly we will have more to announce on pardons and commutations, as I've said many times before, but there's a process," Jean-Pierre said. "He's reviewing it. He's thinking through it. I'm just not going to get into any specifics."

In all, hundreds of advocates, leaders and crime victims urged Biden to follow through on his 2020 campaign promise to “eliminate the death penalty at the federal level.” While a legislative ban of the federal death penalty is unlikely in the final weeks of his administration, the groups are urging Biden to use his constitutional clemency authorities to commute the federal death sentences of the 40 people awaiting execution.

“As family members of murder victims, each of us has had a loved one taken from us by violence," read one of the letters signed by dozens of Americans who lost loved ones to homicides. "While we each have a unique story, our experiences with the criminal justice system and our struggles with grief and trauma have united us in our opposition to the death penalty. We want a justice system that creates safety, healing, and accountability that repairs — one that is responsive to the needs of survivors and family members like us. By all these measures, the death penalty fails.”

On Sunday, Pope Francis urged U.S. authorities to commute the sentences of death row prisoners during his weekly prayer in Vatican City’s St. Peter’s Square. Catholic groups and leaders, including the Catholic Mobilizing Network, were among those who wrote letters to Biden, the country’s second Catholic president.

Religious leaders from many of the United States’ largest faiths also have appealed to Biden, including Baptists, Methodists, evangelical Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. More than 200 Black and indigenous faith leaders with the Faith Leaders of Color Coalition signed a letter to Biden arguing that “ending the death penalty in America will bring us closer to racial reconciliation, closer to a society that fulfills God’s promise.”

“Today, I feel compelled to ask all of you to pray for the inmates on death row in the United States,” Francis said Sunday. “Let us pray that their sentences may be commuted or changed. Let us think of these brothers and sisters of ours and ask the Lord for the grace to save them from death.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops launched a campaign of its own this week similarly demanding Biden offer commutations to death row inmates.

Letters sent to Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland were signed by active and retired sheriffs, police chiefs, corrections officials, prison wardens, prosecutors, U.S. attorneys, Justice Department officials, state attorneys general, federal judges and former U.S. Solicitor General Seth Waxman. Other letters were signed by exonerated former death row prisoners organized by the Innocence Project, business leaders like billionaire Richard Branson and former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg, human rights groups like the ACLU and Amnesty International, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and international organizations based in Germany, Iraq, France, Liberia, Morocco, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and elsewhere. 

The United States is one of roughly 50 countries in the world that continues to use the death penalty, is one of ten countries since 1990 that has executed people under the age of 18, and executes more people per year than all other countries besides China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Somalia, according to Amnesty International.

While Biden has opposed the death penalty and halted federal executions during his administration, his Justice Department has also fought to preserve death penalty sentences for some defendants, including Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who massacred nine Black parishioners at a South Carolina church in 2015. In August, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also rescinded a plea deal with three Sept. 11 attack defendants, including alleged mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, that would’ve allowed them to avoid the death penalty. The U.S. government continued to argue against any plea deal in court as recently as last month.

The 40 people on federal death row include prisoners who were sentenced as early as 1993 and as recently as last year in the case of Robert Bowers, a gunman who killed 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. All are men, 18 are white, 15 are Black, six are Latino and one is of Asian descent, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.