Relief, defiance, anger: Families and advocates react to Biden's death row commutations

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (AP) — Victims' families and others affected by crimes that resulted in federal death row convictions shared a range of emotions on Monday, from relief to anger, after President Joe Biden commuted dozens of the sentences.

Biden converted the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The inmates include people convicted in the slayings of police and military officers, as well as federal prisoners and guards. Others were involved in deadly robberies and drug deals.

Three inmates will remain on federal death row: Dylann Roof, convicted of the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; the 2013 Boston Marathon Bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh's Tree of life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history.

Opponents of the death penalty lauded Biden for a decision they'd long sought. Supporters of Donald Trump, a vocal advocate of expanding capital punishment, criticized the move weeks before the president-elect takes office.

Victims' families and former colleagues share relief and anger

Donnie Oliverio, a retired Ohio police officer whose partner, Bryan Hurst, was killed by an inmate whose death sentence was commuted, said the killer's execution "would have brought me no peace.”

“The president has done what is right here,” Oliverio said in a statement also issued by the White House.

But Hurst's widow, Marissa Gibson, called Biden's move distressing and a "complete dismissal and undermining of the federal justice system," in a statement to The Columbus Dispatch.

Tim Timmerman, whose daughter, Rachel, was thrown into a Michigan lake in 1997 to keep her from testifying in a rape trial, said Biden's decision to commute the killer's sentence offered families “only pain.”

"Where’s the justice in just giving him a prison bed to die comfortably in?” Timmerman said on WOOD-TV.

Heather Turner, whose mother, Donna Major, was killed in a 2017 South Carolina bank robbery, called the commutation of the killer's sentence a “clear gross abuse of power” in a Facebook post.

“At no point did the president consider the victims,” Turner wrote. “He, and his supporters, have blood on their hands.”

Corey Groves, whose mother, Kim Groves, was murdered in a 1994 plot by a New Orleans police officer after she filed a complaint against him, said the family has been living with the “nightmare” of her killer for three decades.

“I have always wanted him to spend the rest of his life in prison and have to wake up every morning and think about what he did when he took our mother from us," Groves said in a statement through his attorney.

Decision to leave Roof on death row met with conflicting emotions

Families of the nine people killed and the survivors of the massacre at the Mother Emanuel AME Church have long had a broad range of opinions on Roof's punishment.

Many forgave him, but some say they can’t forget and their forgiveness doesn’t mean they don’t want to see him put to death for what he did.

Felicia Sanders survived the shooting shielding her granddaughter while watching Roof kill her son, Tywanza, and her aunt, Susie Jackson. Sanders brought her bullet-torn bloodstained Bible to his sentencing.

In a text message to her lawyer, Andy Savage, Sanders called Biden’s decision to not spare Roof’s life a wonderful Christmas gift.

Michael Graham, whose sister, Cynthia Hurd, was killed, told The Associated Press that Roof’s lack of remorse and simmering white nationalism in the country means he is the kind of dangerous and evil person the death penalty is intended for.

“This was a crime against a race of people," Graham said. “It didn’t matter who was there, only that they were Black.”

But the Rev. Sharon Risher, who was Tywanza Sanders’ cousin and whose mother, Ethel Lance, was killed, criticized Biden for not sparing Roof and clearing out federal death row.

“I need the President to understand that when you put a killer on death row, you also put their victims' families in limbo with the false promise that we must wait until there is an execution before we can begin to heal,” Risher said in a statement.

Risher, a board member of Death Penalty Action, which seeks to abolish capital punishment, said during a Zoom news conference that families “are left to be hostages for the years and years of appeals that are to come.”

Abraham Bonowitz, Death Penalty Action’s executive director, said Biden was giving more attention to the three inmates he chose not to spare, something they all wanted as a part of their political motivations to kill.

“When Donald Trump gets to execute them what will really be happening is they will be given a global platform for their agenda of hatred,” Bonowitz said.

Politicians and advocacy groups speak up

Biden had faced pressure from advocacy organizations to commute federal death sentences, and several praised him for taking action in his final month in office.

Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, said in a statement that Biden has shown "the brutal and inhumane policies of our past do not belong in our future.”

Republicans, including Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, criticized the move — and argued its moral ground was shaky given the three exceptions.

“Once again, Democrats side with depraved criminals over their victims, public order, and common decency,” Cotton wrote on X. “Democrats can’t even defend Biden’s outrageous decision as some kind of principled, across-the-board opposition to the death penalty since he didn’t commute the three most politically toxic cases.”

One inmate's attorney expresses thanks — and his remorse

Two men whose sentences were commuted were Norris Holder and Billie Jerome Allen, on death row for opening fire during a 1997 bank robbery in St. Louis, killing a guard, 46-year-old Richard Heflin.

Holder’s attorney, Madeline Cohen, said in an email that Holder, who is Black, was sentenced to death by an all-white jury.

“Norris’ case exemplifies the racial bias and arbitrariness that led the President to commute federal death sentences,” Cohen said. “Norris has always been deeply remorseful for the pain his actions caused, and we hope this decision brings some measure of closure to Richard Heflin’s family.”

But Ed Dowd Jr., the U.S. attorney in St. Louis at the time of the robbery and now a private attorney, criticized Biden's move.

“This case was a message to people who wanted to go out and shoot people for the hell of it, that you’re going to get the death penalty,” Dowd said. Now, "Biden is sending a message that you can do whatever you want and you won’t get the death penalty.”

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This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Rev. Sharon Risher's name.

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Swenson reported from Seattle. Associated Press writers Sara Cline in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Jim Salter in O'Fallon, Missouri; Stephen Smith in New Orleans, and Corey Williams in Detroit contributed.