The Three Death Row Prisoners Biden Chose Not to Spare

President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 men on federal death row but declined to save the lives of three men convicted of “hate-motivated mass murder” or “terrorism.”

The number of prisoners on federal death row shrank from 40 to just three on Monday after President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 men who had been facing the death penalty.

Leaving three men on death row, Mr. Biden said in a statement, is in line with his opposition to carrying out the death penalty “in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”

It also leaves the possibility that President-elect Donald J. Trump, who carried out 13 executions during his first term, will have the remaining three men executed when he returns to office. And the Justice Department under Mr. Biden is also pursuing the death penalty against the gunman who carried out a racist mass shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2022, seeking to add him to the small group of people that remain on federal death row.

Here are the men whom Mr. Biden chose not to spare.

Dylann Roof, 30, was convicted of hate crimes in the killing of nine Black parishioners in a racist attack on a Charleston church in 2015.

A federal jury sentenced Mr. Roof to death in 2017. He had admitted his guilt and offered to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of life in prison.

The Justice Department sought the death penalty over the objection of survivors of the attack and many relatives of the victims.

Lawyers for Mr. Roof have challenged his conviction over concerns about his mental competency and his dealings with his lawyers, but those appeals have been rejected.

Mr. Roof is currently imprisoned at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., where the federal death row and the death chamber are housed.

Robert Bowers, 52, was convicted of hate crimes in the killing of 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.

A federal jury decided last year that Mr. Bowers would be sentenced to death for what is considered the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. His death sentence was the first to be handed down during the Biden administration. Mr. Bowers had offered to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of life in prison but the government declined to make the deal.

Mr. Bowers had been armed with an AR-15 and three handguns when he stormed the synagogue and went after members of three congregations — Tree of Life, New Light and Dor Hadash — that had gathered in parts of the building for morning worship.

His lawyers had argued in court that he had schizophrenia and other mental problems and focused on his troubled childhood. But prosecutors disputed those arguments and focused on the planning he had done in the months before the attack and the antisemitic writings he had left online.

Most family members of the victims supported the government’s decision to seek the death penalty, though some disagreed. Like Mr. Roof, Mr. Bowers is currently imprisoned at the federal prison in Terre Haute.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 31, was convicted of helping to carry out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings that killed three spectators and wounded hundreds more.

Mr. Tsarnaev, who planted the pressure cooker bombs used in the attack with his brother, Tamerlan, in retaliation for American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was sentenced to death by a federal jury in 2015.

In 2020, a federal court overturned his death sentence, but the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated it in 2022.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev died after a shootout with the police during which he was also accidentally run over by his brother.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is being held at a federal prison in Florence, Colo.