(The Center Square) – Three of the 37 people who had their federal death sentences commuted to life without the possibility of parole have Georgia ties.
Anthony George Battle was in prison when he stabbed a correctional officer, according to previous reports and a letter from the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Officer D’Antonio Washington was killed by Battle with a hammer, according to the letter. The organization said Battle was mentally ill and asked Biden to commute his death sentence to life without parole in its letter.
Meier Jason Brown killed Fleming postmaster Sallie Gaglia in 2002 by stabbing her to death, according to a report from WTOC.
Rejon Taylor kidnapped an Atlanta restaurant operator and killed him in Collegedale, Tenn., in 2004, according to Chattanoogan.com. A federal judge in Tennessee sentenced Taylor to death in 2008.
Biden said in a statement he could not “stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
“Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said. “But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”
The three convicted men still on federal death row are Robert Bowers, who killed 11 at a Pittsburgh synagogue; Dylann Roof, who shot nine people in a Black church in Charleston; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who set a bomb at the 2013 Boston Marathon where three people died and hundreds were injured.
U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., called Biden’s action “truly unconscionable.”
“Two days before Christmas, Joe Biden commutes the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates. What a slap in the face to the victims, their families, and our justice system,” Clyde said in a post on X.
