Biden didn't commute the sentences of death row inmates Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Robert Bowers. Here's why.

President Biden announced Monday that he had commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 current federal death row inmates to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,” Biden said in a statement.

Consistent with that rationale, Biden did not change the death sentences for three notorious federal inmates: Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Robert Bowers.

Here’s a look at the three people Biden did not spare, and the motivation behind his decision.

The three who remain

Each of the three federal death row inmates whose sentences Biden did not commute fits into the categories — cases involving terrorism or “hate-motivated mass murder”— laid out in the president’s statement.

Dylann Roof

On June 17, 2015, Roof, a white supremacist from South Carolina, opened fire during a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Epispocal Church in Charleston, killing nine Black Americans and injuring one more. He explained his hatred of Black people on a website registered in his name.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

A U.S. citizen of Chechen descent, Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan planned and carried out the terrorist bombing at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, that killed three people and injured 264 others. Though his brother was killed in a shootout with police four days later, Dzhokhar survived. He told police that the bombing was in retaliation for the deaths of Muslims caused by U.S. military action.

Robert Bowers

During Sabbath services on the morning of Oct. 27, 2018, at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh, white nationalist Robert Bowers carried out the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history. He opened fire with an AR-15 semi-automatic weapon, killing 11 people and injuring another six who were worshipping.

Biden’s motivation

A critic of capital punishment, Biden became the first U.S. president to openly oppose the death penalty. In 2020, his campaign website stated that he would “work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example,” the Associated Press reported.

In 2021, the Biden administration announced a pause on federal capital punishment so that the Justice Department could study how it was being administered. That moratorium effectively ended the practice during Biden’s term.

On Monday, Biden explained that “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.”

A practicing Catholic, Biden’s decision was praised by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who called the commutations “a step closer to building a culture of life,” and by groups that have long contended that Black Americans disproportionately receive the death penalty.

Biden also made clear in his statement that Donald Trump’s return to the White House helped motivate his decision to largely clear death row.

“In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted,” he wrote.

During Trump’s first term in office, his administration ended a 17-year pause on federal executions, eventually putting 13 federal prisoners to death. While that number was the largest of any administration in modern history, Trump has since campaigned on a promise to expand the death penalty to drug dealers.

But now there are just three people remaining on federal death row. Given the time it takes to try and convict capital cases, and the fact that the average appeals process takes 966 days, Trump may not be able to execute more federal prisoners in his second term than he did in his first.

Commutation vs. pardon

Biden’s commutations of federal death row inmates in no way exonerate those convicted of murder, but the action does spare them being executed.

Unlike pardons, which grant complete forgiveness of a crime and restores full citizenship rights, commutations represent a reduction in sentence. In this case, the reduction is to serving out life in prison rather than the prospect of being put to death.

Roof, Tsarnaev and Bowers could still be executed.