Biden burnishes progressive legacy with commutations for child killers, women killers, cop killer and killers of service members

President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 inmates on federal death row, keeping the capital sentences in just three cases.

It’s the latest in a spree of pardons and commutations by Biden, who is trying to burnish his progressive credentials as he faces bleak post-presidential scrutiny.

“[G]uided 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,” said Biden in a statement that covered the commutations. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

Among the criminals benefiting from the reprieves, however, are several child killers, a killer of a correctional officer, killers of military members, two kidnappers and the killer of a Florida family.

One of the killers, who only spent two years on death row, said he and other inmates checked the newspapers each day, confident that Biden would eventually issue a blanket commutation of death sentences.

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, assailed the Biden commutations.  

“Once again, Democrats side with depraved criminals over their victims, public order, and common decency,” Cotton said on X.

Here’s a snapshot of some who will now be facing life in prison, instead of the death penalty:

Thomas Sanders was convicted in 2018 of killing Lexi Roberts, then 12-years-old, after first shooting her mother in the head while they were all on a camping trip. After killing Lexi’s mother, Sanders kept the girl captive with him for several days before he shot her “four times, cut her throat and left her body in the woods,” where she was later found, according to the evidence at trial.

Marvin Charles Gabrion killed Rachel Timmerman after he was facing charges of raping her. Gabrion used a friend to lure Timmerman on a date and then killed her by weighing down her body with chains while she was still alive and dumping her in a shallow lake. Twenty-five years later, authorities still have not found Timmerman’s 11-month-old daughter who was with her at the time of her death.

Richard Allen Jackson was found guilty of kidnapping, raping and murdering Karen Styles, then 22-years-old, as she went for a run in Pisgah National Forest.

David Runyon was found guilty in the murder-for-hire killing of U.S. Navy Ensign Cory Voss. Voss was shot five times at point-blank range after his wife hired Runyon to kill him.

Ricardo Sanchez, Jr., and Daniel Troya shot and killed a mother, father, and their two young children on Oct. 13, 2006, along the turnpike in Florida, according to local West Palm Beach’s CBS News 12.

Jorge Avila Torrez, who was then a corporal in the U.S. Marines, attacked U.S. Navy Petty Officer Second Class Amanda Jean Snell, then 20-years-old, as she slept in her bed on the same floor as Torrez, just eight doors away.

Torrez bound her wrists with the power cord from her laptop computer and strangled her with the rest of the cord. He then dragged her body into a wall locker to hide it, where she was found dead next day, according to the Department of Justice.

Anthony George Battle killed a Georgia corrections officer at a U.S. penitentiary because he thought it would give him more status in prison and he was tired of being bossed around. He was already serving a life sentence when the murder occurred.

In Illinois, Ronald Mikos, a podiatrist, was sentenced to death for killing a federal witness, Joyce Brannon, in a church basement because Brannon would testify about how Mikos bilked Medicare for $1.8 million. Brannon was shot six times with a .22 caliber rifle.

Iouri Mikhel and Jurijus Kadamovas were found guilty for luring five victims to their death by strangulation in a kidnap-for-ransom plot after money was electronically traced to them.

They lured victims with promises of business deals, kidnapped them, extorted money from the families, strangled them and then dumped the bodies in a reservoir.

Rejon Taylor was found guilty in 2022 for abducting an Atlanta restaurant owner and then shooting him. But Taylor, while admitting the crime, said it was just “spontaneous ruckus,” not a premeditated murder, according to local News 3 Atlanta.

He suspected that he and other federal death row inmates had an ace up their sleeve.

“There’s not a day that goes by that we’re not scanning the news for hints of when or if the Biden administration will take meaningful action to implement his promises” to commute all federal death penalties, Taylor told local 11 News Alive.

His death row paintings are being sold by The Juniper gallery.

Taylor’s also a poet, with some of his work featured on the Juniper website, including the following:

But the heart laughs/ rebelling against their rules/ breaking free/ of customs the dead holds so dear.

Biden kept the death warrants in place for Dylann Roof, who killed nine at Mother Emanuel AME Church; the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue, said the Associated Press. 

“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,” added Biden in his statement on the commutations.

But Cotton wasn’t buying Biden’s statement.

“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. Democrats are the party of politically convenient justice,” Cotton concluded.

Complete list of those commuted: