CHICAGO (WLS) — President Joe Biden announced overnight he was commuting the sentences of 37 federal death row prisoners to life in prison without parole, including two from Illinois.
President-elect Donald Trump, an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment, takes office in weeks and has said he will resume federal executions.
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Most of the prisoners were convicted in low-profile cases including two from Illinois.
Jorde Avila Torres was convicted in the murders of Laura Hobbs and Krystal Tobias, aged 8 and 9, in Zion in 2005. Torres was sentenced to death for a separate murder of a Navy sailor in Virginia.
Ronald Mikos was a Chicago doctor who was sentenced to death for the murder of patient who was going to testify against him in a Medicare fraud scheme.
Just three federal inmates continue to face execution. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 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.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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