President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 of 40 federal inmates on death row on Monday — including cold-blooded murderers who had killed entire families, and predators who had slaughtered innocent children.
For example, Ricardo Sanchez, Jr., and Daniel Troya had been convicted for the brutal murder of an entire family. As Palm Beach, Florida, CBS affiliate 12 News recalled, the two “shot and killed a mother, father, and their two young children”:
The murders occurred early in the morning of October 13, 2006, when the pair stopped the family’s Jeep Cherokee along the Turnpike, outside of Fort Pierce.
Each family member – Jose Luis Escobedo, Luis Damian Escobedo, Luis Julian Escobedo, and Yessica Guerro Escobedo – was shot and left their bodies there. Sanchez and Troya drove off in both their Dodge Ram van and the Escobedo’s black Jeep Cherokee.
The Palm Beach Post added:
In 2009, Daniel “Homer” Troya and Ricardo “Ricky” Sanchez, Jr. were convicted of carjacking resulting in death and other felonies for their roles in the 2006 deaths of Jose “Lou” Escobedo, his wife Yessica, and their two young sons aged 4 and 3. Their bodies were found riddled with bullets off the side of Florida’s Turnpike in Port St. Lucie.
Federal prosecutors said that their drug trafficking boss, Danny Varela, ordered the hit to wipe out a large drug debt and to steal 15 kilos of cocaine Escobedo, who was the group’s cocaine smuggler, had with him at the time. Sanchez and Troya followed the Escobedos north to the Daytona Beach area where Jose made the drug pickup, and then killed them on the Turnpike, prosecutors said.
Another death row prisoner, Thomas Sanders, had been convicted in 2014 for kidnapping an murdering a 12-year-old girl. The FBI recalled his crimes in a press release at the time of his sentencing:
Sanders met Suellen Roberts, 31, in the summer of 2010 when Roberts rented a storage unit at a warehouse in Las Vegas where Sanders worked. Roberts and Sanders began dating, and approximately two months later Roberts agreed that she and her 12-year-old daughter, Lexis, would go on a trip with Sanders over the Labor Day weekend to a wildlife park near the Grand Canyon. As they were returning to Nevada after three days of traveling, Sanders pulled off Interstate 40 in a remote location in the Arizona desert and shot Suellen Roberts in the head and forced Lexis Roberts into the car, keeping her captive.
Sanders drove several days across the country before he murdered Lexis Roberts in a wooded area in Catahoula Parish, Louisiana. Evidence at trial established that Sanders shot Lexis Roberts four times, cut her throat and left her body in the woods, where a hunter found her body on Oct. 8, 2010.
…
At trial, the jury heard a recorded confession in which Sanders admitted killing the mother and daughter.
Another murderer whose sentence Biden commuted was Philadelphia drug kingpin Kaboni Savage. The local Philadelphia NBC affiliate recalled that Savage “was convicted of murdering 12 people, which included a family of six killed in a brutal firebombing.”
It added:
The family Savage firebombed in 2004 belonged to Eugene Coleman, his former confident turned FBI informant. In retaliation, Savage killed Coleman’s mother plus his cousin, his infant son and three other children. Coleman was in prison at the time.
Although Savage was also incarcerated at the time of the firebombing, he orchestrated the attack through phone calls and prison visits and communicated with other inmates through prison plumbing pipes.
The only three federal inmates still on death row are Dylan Roof, who murdered nine black parishoners in the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; Robert Bowers, who murdered eleven Jews in the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in 2018; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the two Islamic terrorist brothers behind the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.
As Biden commutes death row sentences, how Trump plans to expand executions
With just weeks left in office, US President Joe Biden has commuted the sentences of 37 of 40 federal death row inmates – potentially thwarting President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to expand federal executions during his upcoming administration.
Biden’s move was swiftly condemned by Republicans, with some accusing the president of siding with criminals over law-abiding Americans.
Federal executions were relatively rare before Trump’s first term in office, which finished with a flurry of executions that ended a 130-year-old precedent of pausing executions amid a presidential transition.
He has vowed to resume the practice when he returns to the White House in January, setting the stage for possible legal battles early in the administration.
Here’s what we know.
Biden’s decision criticised
On Monday, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 death row inmates, switching their penalty to life without parole.
Only three inmates were left to face the death penalty, including convicted Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Robert Bowers, who was sentenced to death for killing 11 worshippers and wounding seven during a shooting at a the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.
The third, Dylann Roof, was sentenced to death in 2017 for a mass shooting that left nine black parishioners dead at the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
While the move was widely praised by human rights groups such as Amnesty International, it was quickly condemned by some Republicans, as well as Trump’s transition team and political allies.
In a statement, Trump communications director Steven Cheung said that “these are among the worst killers in the world and this abhorrent decision by Joe Biden is a slap in the face to the victims, their families, and their loved ones.
“President Trump stands for the rule of law, which will return when he is back in the White House,” he added. Trump cannot undo the commutations when he returns to the White House next month.
Texas Republican Chip Roy posted on X that the decision was “unconscionable” and an abuse of power “to carry out a miscarriage of justice”.
Another Republican, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, said that “when given the choice between law-abiding Americans or criminals, Joe Biden and the Democrats choose criminals every time.”
Some family members also expressed anger.
On Facebook, Heather Turner – whose mother was killed in a 2017 bank robbery – called the commutations a “gross abuse of power”.
“At no point did the president consider the victims,” she wrote. “He, and his supporters, have blood on their hands.”
The commutations do not apply to the approximately 2,200 death row inmates convicted by state courts, over which the president holds no authority.
Getty ImagesWhat has Trump said about the death penalty?
Over the course of his election campaign, Trump vowed to resume federal executions and make more people eligible to receive the death penalty, including those convicted of raping children or drug and human-trafficking cases, as well as migrants who kill US citizens or police officers.
“These are terrible, terrible, horrible people who are responsible for death, carnage and crime all over the country,” Trump said when he announced his presidential candidacy in 2022.
“We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” he added.
There are more than 40 federal laws that can, in theory, result in the death penalty, ranging from murders committed during a drug-related shooting to genocide.
Almost all – with the exception of espionage and treason – explicitly involve the death of a victim.
Trump, however, has provided few details on how he plans to accomplish his campaign pledge.
Despite the lack of clarity, Trump’s vows to expand the federal death penalty have elicited strong warnings from human rights advocates.
In an 11 December statement, for example, the American Civil Liberties Union said Trump’s “chilling” plans amount to an expansion of the “killing spree he initiated in the final six months of his first presidency”.
“He’s already shown us that he will act on these promises,” the statement said.
The inmates executed during the waning days of Trump’s first administration included Lisa Montgomery, the first woman executed by the federal government since 1953, and Lezmond Mitchell, the only Native American on federal death row.
What can Trump actually do?
US media reported that Trump cannot reverse Biden’s commutations.
Trump’s efforts to expand the death penalty to crimes that do not involve murder are likely to face legal challenges.
In 2008, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that those convicted of raping children cannot be executed, adding that it’s unclear if the death penalty could be applied to crimes in which a victim is not killed.
According to the National Registry of Exonerations, cases with child victims are particularly prone to wrongful convictions, can be “extremely emotional” and pit family members against one another.
Any further expansion of crimes that are eligible for the federal death penalty would require Congress to act and change the law.
In 2024, two bills – both sponsored by Florida Republican and Trump ally Anna Paulina Luna – sought to expand the use of capital offences to include possession of child pornography, as well as the trafficking, exploitation and abuse of children.
Both failed to pass in the House of Representatives.
Trump is also unlikely to be able to quickly re-populate the pool of federal death row inmates, as most death penalty cases take years and are subject to lengthy appeals processes.
While he does not have any direct authority over state executions, some experts have warned that Trump’s pro-death penalty stance may trigger more executions at a state level.
“His rhetoric can and has spurred draconian measures and attitudes by leaders in states on several issues, including in the context of the criminal legal system,” Yasmin Cader, a deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union and director of the Trone Center for Justice and Equality told CNN.
In addition to the federal government and US military, 27 US states still have the death penalty on the books.
A Gallup poll conducted in October found that a slim majority of Americans – 53% – support the death penalty for convicted murderers, up from 50% a year before.
Democrat Study Finds Party Is Overly Focused on Diversity and Elites
The Democratic Party needs reform due to its hyperfocus on diversity and elitism, according to research by the far-left group Navigator Research.
Democrats have floated many theories. Some of the theories include putting the blame on inflation or suggesting black and Hispanic voters voted for Trump because they are misogynists.
Navigator Research’s findings indicate the Democrats are too weak, too out of touch with the American worker, and too exclusionary of ethnocentric ideas.
The researches studied three types of voters: Young men from swing states who voted for Trump in 2024 but voted for Biden in 2020, swing state voters who did not vote in 2024 but voted for Biden in 2020, voters from Democrat states who voted Democrats in the past but for Trump in 2024.
Politico reported the findings of the study:
When asked to compare the Democratic Party to an animal, one participant compared the party to an ostrich because “they’ve got their heads in the sand and are absolutely committed to their own ideas, even when they’re failing.” Another likened them to koalas, who “are complacent and lazy about getting policy wins that we really need.” Democrats, another said, are “not a friend of the working class anymore.”
The focus group research, shared first with POLITICO, represents the latest troubling pulse check for a party still sorting through the wreckage of its November losses and looking for a path to rebuild. Without a clear party leader and with losses across nearly every demographic in November, Democrats are walking into a second Trump presidency without a unified strategy to improve their electoral prospects. And while some Democrats blame Biden, others blame inflation and still others blame “losing hold of culture,” the feedback from the focus groups found Democrats’ problems are even more widespread and potentially long-lasting than a single election cycle.
The focus groups offer “a pretty scathing rebuke” of the Democratic Party brand, said Rachael Russell, director of polling and analytics at Navigator Research, a project within the Hub Project, which is a Democratic nonprofit group.
Participants also characterized the Democratic Party as pushing ideas that are “often very different from what the average Democratic voter is,” and elitist snobs who are “obsessed with appealing to these very far-left social progressivism.”
They described Vice President Kamala Harris as “inauthentic,” “very dishonest,” and that she “did not seem competent.”
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():focal(749x9:751x11)/alfonso-ribeiro-and-daughter-ava-051623-733bbb81bf864afe97f1ddbcc575e17c.jpg?w=1200&resize=1200,0&ssl=1 "Alfonso Ribeiro Says Daughter, 4, Faces Long Recovery After Doctor Scalpeled Skin Following Accident")
