President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office is putting a spotlight on the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, which houses federal death row. (article available here)
As president, Biden has the unfettered authority to issue commutations. President Biden is a practicing Catholic. The church opposes capital punishment.
And hundreds of organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, are calling on the president to grant clemency -- not just for individual prisoners but to everyone on death row. That would prevent the incoming administration from executing a single person. It would also be unprecedented at the federal level. But Biden is an unprecedented president in that none of his predecessors took office as an opponent of capital punishment.