Led by two prominent African American congresswomen, 35 Democrats have urged Joe Biden to commute the sentences of all 49 federal prisoners left on death row – days after the Trump administration finished its rush to kill 13 such prisoners.
Early last Saturday Dustin Higgs, 48, became the last of those prisoners to be killed, after Trump lifted a long-standing moratorium on federal executions. Biden entered the White House on Wednesday.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, of the 49 people still on federal death row, 21 are white, 20 are black, seven are Latino and one is Asian.
Among those prisoners is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of planting pressure-cooker bombs on the route of the Boston Marathon in April 2013, killing three and injuring 264. His death sentence was overturned last year, a decision that is now before the supreme court.
In a letter sent to Biden on Friday, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Cori Bush of Missouri led lawmakers in calling on Biden…