U.S. Reps Urge Biden to Use Clemency to Correct “Extreme Use of Incarceration”
A group of congress members says Joe Biden should pardon people or commute sentences before his term ends.
Today, more than 60 members of Congress demanded that President Joe Biden grant clemency to the thousands of incarcerated people serving unjust sentences or sitting on federal death row before he leaves office.
In their letter to Biden, lawmakers urged the president to use his clemency powers to “help broad classes of people and cases, including the elderly and chronically ill, those on death row, people with unjustified sentencing disparities, and women who were punished for defending themselves against their abusers.”
The letter was spearheaded by Representatives Ayanna Pressley, James Clyburn, and Mary Gay Scanlon. Other signatories include Congressmembers Cori Bush, Pramila Jayapal, Barbara Lee, Jerrold Nadler, Jan Schakowsky, and Rashida Tlaib.
Biden has granted 25 pardons and 132 commutations out of the thousands of applications his administration has received. He has also pardoned two classes of people who were not incarcerated—people convicted of simple marijuana possession and members of the military who were court martialed because of their sexual orientation.
But the congressmembers say that many more people can be safely released, noting that 90 percent of people in federal prison are convicted of non-violent offenses.
“Our country is spending exorbitant amounts of money to keep people in prison for prolonged periods of time, including those who do not pose a significant public safety threat,” the congress members wrote. “The reliance on incarceration in our legal system has created a crisis that must be addressed.”
Biden cannot save the lives of those sent to death row under Trump’s upcoming presidency, but he can commute the sentences of those currently facing death.
Trump enthusiastically supports the death penalty. In 1989, he infamously bought full-page newspaper ads calling for the execution of five children falsely accused of rape, now known as the Central Park Five. In the last six months of Trump’s presidency, he executed 13 people, ending an almost twenty-year de facto moratorium on federal executions. Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, commuted the sentences of only two death row prisoners during his lame duck period, despite pleas from advocates. During Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, he promised to end the federal death penalty. Although no executions occurred during his presidency, his Department of Justice sought the death penalty in at least two cases. The 2024 Democratic Party platform did not mention capital punishment at all, unlike the 2016 and 2020 platform which called for its abolition.
The Heritage Foundation’s proposed 2025 Presidential Transition Project, known as Project 2025, advises the “next conservative Administration [to] do everything possible to obtain finality for the 44 prisoners currently on federal death row,” as well as to pursue capital punishment in new cases. Many fear the right-wing think tank’s 900-plus page policy wishlist will be the Trump administration’s roadmap as it moves to deport millions of people, deregulate industries, slash taxes for the wealthy, and send more people to death row.
In addition to potentially saving the lives of dozens of death row prisoners, Biden also has the opportunity to reduce the sentences of thousands of people serving time under draconian laws that both Republicans and Democrats have since rejected.
Earlier this month, several Democratic senators asked Biden to reduce the sentences of thousands of people who would have benefited from the First Step Act, a federal criminal legal system reform law, if it had been applied retroactively. The legislation, signed by then-President Trump, ushered in a number of changes, including reducing the mandatory minimum sentences for some drug-related crimes. The senators also asked Biden to commute the sentences of thousands of people who were “serving unjustifiably long sentences for crack cocaine offenses.”
In 1986, President Ronald Reagan enacted the federal Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which stipulated that those caught with crack cocaine would receive harsher sentences than those arrested for powder cocaine—even though the only difference between the two drugs is baking soda. In 2022, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland finally instructed federal prosecutors to seek similar sentences in both cases. But his actions did not help those who had already been sentenced under laws that punished crack cocaine offenses much more harshly than powder cocaine offenses.
“We respectfully urge you to use your power of executive clemency to deliver justice to thousands of Americans serving unduly onerous sentences, the vast majority of who are African American,” those senators wrote.
In today’s letter to Biden, House members urged Biden to use his clemency powers to reunite families that had been separated by the country’s “extreme use of incarceration,” noting that one in two adults have an incarcerated family member and that the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
“You have the support of millions of people across the country who have felt the harms of mass incarceration: young children longing to hug their grandparents, people who have taken responsibility for their mistakes, and those who simply were never given a fair chance,” they wrote. “These are the people seeking help that only you can provide through the use of your presidential clemency power.”
Read the full letter below: