Why is Trump angry at Biden for sparing the 'worst killers' from death?

Barely a few weeks before leaving the White House, President Joe Biden used his discretionary powers to reduce the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row to life imprisonment.

The timing of the presidential decree is important because President-elect Donald Trump – who will assume office on January 20, 2025 – is pro-capital punishment, a polarising issue in US politics that divides Americans along ethical, religious and political lines.

The presidential commutation of the convicted murderers – which follows nearly four years of moratorium on federal capital punishment – has generated an intense debate in the US.

The presidential order is constitutionally enshrined, which makes it impossible for the incoming Trump administration to reverse the move.

“I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted,” Biden said.

Trump quickly denounced the decision, terming it a “slap in the face” of the murder victims and their families. “These are among the worst killers in the world,” his spokesperson said in a statement.

“President Trump stands for the rule of law, which will return when he is back in the White House,” he added, implying the imminent reinstatement of capital punishment under the incoming administration.

Trump said in the 2024 campaign that he would not only remove the moratorium on federal executions but also widen the net of crimes that are punishable by death under federal law.

A deeply divisive issue

Americans remain divided along party lines on the issue of capital punishment.

Republicans show stronger support for the death sentence while citing deterrence, retribution and justice for victims as reasons.

The view within the Democratic Party is more divided, with a growing segment advocating for the abolition of capital punishment because of concerns over racial bias, wrongful convictions and ethical considerations.

“The divide is between people who care for life and those who do not care about deliberate killing,” says Joe Lockard, associate professor at Arizona State University, who has conducted extensive research on death row literature and public mobilisation against capital punishment.

“Capital punishment needs to be seen as more than sticking a poison needle into one person’s arm. It is a systemic absence of care whether people live or die,” he tells TRT World.

The death penalty has been abolished either in practice or by law in a majority of countries (144) around the world. But in the US, the federal government, along with 27 of the 50 states, continues to retain the death penalty.

The number of new death sentences in 2024 was 26 while the number of executions at the state level was 25. Only four states – Alabama, California, Florida and Texas – accounted for the majority (20) of new death sentences in the outgoing year.

Trump restarted federal executions in his first term after a pause of nearly two decades, carrying out 13 of these in the final six months of his administration.

‘Empirical facts change nothing’

According to a 2021 report by the Pew Research Center, more Americans favour than oppose the death penalty. Six in every 10 US adults support the death penalty for people convicted of murder.

The clear support for the death penalty among the general public is despite the fact that nearly eight in every 10 US adults acknowledge the risk of innocent people being put to death because of a faulty justice system.

However, a more recent Gallup study says support for capital punishment is now at a “five-decade low” in the US.

Gallup’s polling showed that even though more than five in every 10 Americans are in favour of the death penalty, that number “masks considerable differences” between older and younger Americans.

Within the 18-43 age group, for example, more than half are now opposed to the death penalty, according to Gallup’s October 2024 polling.

Lockard says the Trump's "make-America-great-again" supporters will have no objection to renewing executions by the federal government under the president-elect.

“Empirical facts change nothing. There is a well-demonstrated absence of correlation between the use of capital punishment and crime rates,” he says.

There is substantial evidence suggesting racial disparities in sentencing in the US. Minorities, especially African Americans, are disproportionately sentenced to death, which raises civil rights concerns and questions about equality under the law.

Federal capital cases in the US must be approved for prosecution by the US attorney general. Data shows nearly three in every four defendants authorised for death penalty prosecution from 1989 to June 2024 have been “people of colour” or non-white.

Similarly, six in every 10 of all Americans federally sentenced to death over the same period have been people of colour.

Furthermore, major advancements in DNA technology have led to an ever-increasing number of exonerations, highlighting the justice system’s fallibility.

The US prison network currently has more innocent people today than ever before. An average of four wrongly convicted death-row prisoners have been exonerated each year since 1973.

“Capital punishment is about revenge. Arguments based on social data do not win, whatever their validity. Emotions win,” Lockard says.