Victims and families react as Biden spares the lives of 37 federal death row inmates

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

44% : Donnie Oliverio, a retired Ohio police officer whose partner was killed by an inmate whose death sentence was commuted, said the execution of "the person who killed my police partner and best friend 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, "and what is consistent with the faith he
40% : 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.
39% : "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," Richer said in a statement.
38% : 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.
38% : Two men whose sentences were commuted were Norris Holder and Billie Jerome Allen, on death row for opening fire with assault rifles during a 1997 bank robbery in St. Louis, killing a guard, 46-year-old Richard Heflin.
34% : "Norris' case exemplifies the racial bias and arbitrariness that led the President to commute federal death sentences," Cohen said.
26% : SEE ALSO: Biden commutes sentences of 37 murderers on death row"This was a crime against a race of people," Graham said.
23% : "These three racists and terrorists who have been left on death row came to their crimes from political motivations.
19% : "But the Rev. Sharon Richer, who was Tywanza Sanders' cousin and whose mother, Ethel Lance, was killed, criticized Biden for not sparing Roof and clearing out all of death row.
18% : Supporters of Donald Trump, a vocal advocate of expanding capital punishment, criticized the move as an assault to common decency just weeks before the president-elect takes office.
18% : 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.

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