Just before Christmas 2024, dozens of families across America heard the unthinkable: President Joe Biden was commuting the death sentences of the criminals convicted of murdering their loved ones.
Months later, Attorney General Pam Bondi welcomed several to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to try and slightly right the wrongs they suffered.
Nowhere in Biden’s proclamation did he insist that any of the 37 death row inmates were wrongly convicted — many viewed his last-second clemency as more of a back-door path to abolish the death penalty than anything related to justice.
Bondi hosted several of the families directly affected by these commutations at the DOJ, and several of the families spoke with the Washington Reporter about what it meant for the federal government to actually listen to them.
“Absolutely,” the Christmas timing of the decisions hurt them, the families all said.
“It was like a Christmas present for the killers,” one family member, who requested anonymity out of fear for her life, told the Reporter. That individual was particularly angry that her relative’s murderer has art lessons in prison.
Biden, the victim said, “dismantled the justice system” via these commutations.
“What the eff?” the family member added.
Among those who met with Bondi were Doug McCrae, Danny Major, and Heather Turner — the family members of Donna Major, one of two women murdered in a 2017 bank robbery by Brandon Council.
Council received a commutation on his death sentence from Biden.
Donna Major’s family heard virtually nothing from the Biden administration, apart from in May 2024, when they were told that Biden was considering granting a commutation — which they vehemently opposed, to deaf ears. None of the families the Reporter spoke to had heard from a federal official higher than a U.S. Attorney, they said.
“My heart shattered” upon hearing the news, Turner said. Biden “does not get the anxiety of doing every day tasks” like she does following her mother’s murder.
“I don’t think he knows the crimes that took place,” Turner added.
While Turner told the Reporter that she knows that the death penalty won’t bring her mother back, she is tired of paying for meals for her mother’s killer. Major’s family all insisted that Biden’s move was “political,” something they wished it wouldn’t be.
Council’s death sentence wasn’t even the only one overturned by Biden in that community. Jimmy Richardson, the 15th Circuit Solicitor, told the Reporter that his “office actually has two federal death penalty cases that were overturned.”
“The first was Brandon Basham and Chadrick Fulks,” Richardson said. “These two escaped from a prison facility in Kentucky and came to Horry County. They killed a mother of two.”
“Her name was Alice Donaven. The second was Brandon Council,” he continued. “He killed Katie Skeen and Donna Major in a 2017 bank robbery at CresCom bank in Conway.”
Richardson said that while “presidents have the constitutional right to grant such pardons [and issue clemencies], that should not lessen the pain that these decisions can cause.”
“The Skeen family, the Donavon family, and the Major family have all gone through the living nightmare that is known as a death penalty case,” Richardson said. “They came in and did everything they could to honor their loved ones and seek justice for their loved ones’ killers.
“They trusted in a system that is now let them down,” he added. Other prosecutors noted in the Reporter’s pages shortly after Biden’s decision that the commutations undermine America’s judicial system.
“Biden’s decision to commute the sentences of 37 individuals on death row was wrong,” Ron Welch, the Muskingum County Prosecuting Attorney, wrote in a Reporter op-ed. “It’s a slap in the face to the victims, law enforcement, and our judicial system that provides everyone with equal justice under the law.”
While Biden commuted 37 death row sentences, he did not commute the remaining three, those of the Boston Marathon bomber, the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church shooter, or the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter.
Biden was “playing politics” with the commutations, McCrae said. The moves drew nationwide condemnation from leading opponents of progressive prosecutors and soft-on-crime policies.
Ada Furciniti, the executive director of Protecting Americans Action Fund, told the Reporter that “President Biden’s Christmas commutations were a slap in the face to crime victims and a gift to violent criminals, straight out of the George Soros playbook.”
“Whether it’s Soros-funded prosecutors refusing to prosecute or Biden using his final days to pardon offenders, the message is the same: criminals first, victims last,” she said. “This isn’t compassion, it’s chaos and Americans are paying the price.”
Across the country, prosecutors told the Reporter that Biden’s last-second commutations were devastating to the rule of law.
“Joe Biden nearly emptied federal death row,” Mark Davidson, the District Attorney of Tennessee’s 25th Judicial District, told the Reporter. “In doing so he arbitrarily, based on his personal views, undermined the rule of law in cases where the legal process has been meticulously followed, disrespected the role of juries, judges, and the appellate process, which all play crucial roles in capital punishment cases, and further victimized those already traumatized by these horrific crimes.”
Trump, for his part, promised to “vigorously” implement the death penalty following Biden’s commutations. Davidson told the Reporter that he’s on board with “the Trump EO which said that these commutations subvert and undermine capital punishment, defy the laws of our nation, make a mockery of justice, and insult the victims of these horrible crimes.”
“From a personal viewpoint, I’ve handled multiple death penalty cases at trial and on appeal, and commuting a death sentence upends decades of hard work to achieve justice in cases that are the worst of the worst,” he continued.
The families the Reporter spoke to, for their part, were unified in their support for the death penalty, something that both President Donald Trump and Bondi are supporting.
Additionally, Turner had a message for Trump.
“Thank you for putting the safety of victims first,” she said. “Thank you for fighting for justice.”
Read more here.