US President Joe Biden on Monday (Dec 23) commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 inmates on federal death row in the country.
The crimes of the 37 convicts who had their death sentences “reclassified from execution to life without the possibility of parole” included murder, kidnapping and shootings, yet they received clemency. This begs the question of why were three death row inmates left to meet the grim fate?
Here’s what you need to know about the three individuals that were not part of Biden’s clemency:
Dylann Roof
Dylann Roof, a white Supremacist, was behind the tragic Charleston church shooting of 2015.
On June 17, 2015, during a bible study, Roof, who was 21-years-old at the time, shot dead nine people and injured a tenth one at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
(Image courtesy: Wikipedia)
All of Roof’s victims were African Americans. When caught, he confessed that he carried out the shooting in hopes of igniting a race war.
On December 15, 2016, he was convicted in a federal court on 33 charges, including hate crimes, and subsequently, on January 11, 2017, he was sentenced to death for his crimes.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
Dzhokhar “Jahar” Anzorovich Tsarnaev, along with his brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was behind the Boston Marathon bombing of 2013.
On April 15, 2013, the two brothers planted a series of home-made pressure cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. Their attack claimed the lives of three people, while 264 others were injured.
(Image courtesy: Wikipedia)
Later, in a getaway attempt, the two brothers killed MIT Police Officer Sean Collier while attempting to steal his weapon. In the ensuing shoot-out, Tamerlan was killed and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was injured.
He was charged with charges of usage of a weapon of mass destruction resulting in death, in addition to aiding and abetting. On May 15, 2015, the jury sentenced 21-year-old Dzhokhar to death by lethal injection.
Robert Bowers
Robert Gregory Bowers is the perpetrator behind the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, an antisemitic terrorist attack that took place at the Tree of Life—Or L’Simcha Congregation synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighbourhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2018.
On October 27, 2018, during the Shabbat morning services, he killed eleven people and wounded six, including several Holocaust survivors.
The attack is considered the deadliest attack on a local Jewish community in American history so far, second only to the 2019 Jersey City shooting.
Bowers, 46-year-old at the time of his crime, was sentenced to death by legal injection last year, on August 3, 2023.
(With inputs from agencies)
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