South Carolina Democratic Rep. James Clyburn urges President Joe Biden to recommit sentences of federal death row inmates during a Wednesday press conference outside the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — House Democrats and anti-death penalty advocates pressed Wednesday for President Joe Biden to save the lives of federal death row inmates before his term expires in January.

The push comes as President-elect Donald Trump is set to return to the White House. The former president expedited 13 executions of people on federal death row in the last six months of his first term, which advocates said increased the urgency for Biden to spare prisoners now facing death sentences.

“I joined the abolition movement during the federal killing spree under the first Trump administration,” said Brandi Slaughter, a board member of the death penalty abolition group, Death Penalty Action. “We know what the next president plans to do if any prisoners are left under a sentence of death at the end of the Biden administration. We’ve been there.”

There are currently 40 people on federal death row, all men. There have been no federal executions under the Biden administration. 

On the campaign trail, Trump often called for the death penalty, including for migrants who kill U.S. citizens and human traffickers.

Outside the U.S. Capitol Wednesday, Democratic Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, James Clyburn of South Carolina, Mary Scanlon of Pennsylvania and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota pressed for Biden to exercise his clemency authority before Trump comes into office on Jan. 20 next year.

“The mass incarceration crisis is one of our country’s greatest failures,” Pressley said. “It is a policy failure, and it is a moral failure. The shameful crisis that has ravaged our communities, destabilized our families and inflicted generational struggle for far too long.”

Pressley’s father was incarcerated during her early life.

“The system only offered him criminalization and incarceration for his substance use disorder, and as a child, I was forced to also carry that burden, that stigma, that shame,” she said.

Calls for clemency

Pressley said Democrats sent Biden a letter asking him to use his clemency, and proposed types of convicts who should be prioritized. The letter was signed by 64 House Democrats.

Pressley said examples of those deserving leniency included prisoners who are elderly, chronically ill, subjected to sentencing disparities between crack and powder cocaine and women who were “punished for defending themselves against their abusers or were coerced into criminal activity as part of an abusive relationship.” 

“Those on death row who are at risk of barbaric and inhumane murder at the hands of the Trump administration can have their death sentence commuted and be resentenced to a prison term,” she said.

“We’re here today to ask him to take another step in that direction and to demonstrate, once again, a very positive consequence of his having been elected our 46th president, and to carry out his clemency powers in a very positive way,” Clyburn said.

Omar said that “clemency represents a critical opportunity to correct long-standing injustices, recognize human potential for redemption and acknowledge that our legal system has often been more punitive than restorative.”

In addition to advocating for death-row clemency, Scanlon said that Biden should consider pardoning people for simple marijuana possession and former LGBTQ service members who were convicted under military law because of their sexual orientation.

The Biden administration earlier this year did move to pardon military vets who were charged under military law for same-sex relationships.

Last year, Biden granted clemency to nearly a dozen people for nonviolent drug offenses. In 2022, he granted clemency to nearly 80 people charged with nonviolent crimes.