Biden considers commuting sentences for all death row inmates

President Joe Biden is opting to commute the sentences of 40 men on the federal government's death row a month before President-elect Donald Trump takes office and will likely resume the rapid pace of executions as during his first term.

According to an exclusive report from the Wall Street Journal, Biden, a devout Catholic, is bowing to pressure from various religious and civil rights groups who are asking the president for a full commutation of death row inmates.

According to people familiar with the matter, Biden's intentions gained particular momentum after earlier this month, Pope Francis prayed for the commutation of America's condemned inmates.

As a result, the U.S. president spoke with the Pope on Thursday and scheduled a meeting at the Vatican next month.

According to the WSJ's sources, Biden could decide before Christmas. However, he is still in mulling over whether to commute the sentences of all convicts or whether death sentences for the most egregious convicts should be upheld.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, charged with overseeing federal prisons, recommended to Biden that he commute all sentences except those for terrorism and hate crimes.

"Possible exceptions could include Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and wounded more than 250 others, Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people in the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, and Dylann Roof, who in 2015 killed nine at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C," reads the WSJ.

Some Republicans have already been critical of the commutation prospect.

"It would mean that progressive politics is more important to the president than the lives taken by these murderers," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

"It would mean that society’s most forceful condemnation of white supremacy and antisemitism must give way to legal mumbo jumbo," the senator added, referring to the motives of inmates like Bowers and Roof.

If Biden ultimately decides to commute the sentences, the move would come a week after the president pardoned 1,500 people in a single day, the largest in the nation's history.