Federal Death Row “Surprised,” Relieved by Biden Commutations

Rejon Taylor awoke to the sound of voices outside his death row cell just after 5 a.m. on Monday morning. A neighbor in the Special Confinement Unit at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, where the federal government sends men it has sentenced to die, was talking about a segment he caught on NPR. 

“One guy, he wakes up early and listens to the radio,” Taylor told me later that morning. “And he was like, ‘Hey, I think I heard them say something about Biden — he commuted the sentences of 37 guys.’” 

Taylor turned on CNN. Sure enough, the news was written on the screen. 

“And he was like, ‘Hey, I think I heard them say something about Biden — he commuted the sentences of 37 guys.’”

“And I was surprised,” he said softly, with a blend of joy and relief. “Surprised.” 

Since the reelection of Donald Trump, a rising chorus of activists, lawmakers, and members of the legal community had been calling on President Joe Biden to commute the sentences of all 40 men on federal death row to life without parole. 

Although Taylor was one of the dozens who had filed an application asking for clemency, he was not optimistic. He started feeling a glimmer of hope on Friday night, when he checked his email to find an article from the Wall Street Journal saying that Biden was mulling mass commutations. He printed it out and made copies for his neighbors. “This is my FIRST time feeling REAL hope about commutations for the row!” he said.

Only four years ago, Taylor and his neighbors lived through an unprecedented execution spree that left him deeply traumatized. Between July 2020 and January 2021, the Trump administration executed 13 people in the federal death chamber. As an orderly, Taylor cleaned out the death watch cells where the men would await their execution. His clemency petition described how he carefully packed up any belongings left behind, approaching the task “as a small measure of dignity he could give to his fellow man.”  

Taylor was sentenced to death in 2008 for fatally shooting an Atlanta restaurateur named Guy Luck. His lawyers described it as a botched kidnapping that crossed state lines into Tennessee. Taylor was 18 years old at the time and had never been convicted of a crime. 

His trial, which took place in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was rooted in racism, his post-conviction attorneys argued. A woman who served as an alternate on his jury later told a local reporter that she’d heard other jurors say they needed to “make an example” of Taylor. “It was like, here’s this little black boy,” she said of fellow jurors’ sentiment. “Let’s send him to the Chair.” 

Like many who commit violent crimes in their youth, Taylor, who is now 40, matured considerably over his 16 years on death row, developing a reputation as someone who showed deep empathy and care toward his neighbors. My own correspondence with Taylor dating back to 2020 reflects this too. In our most recent conversations, he was more interested in advocating for his neighbors than he was to talk about himself.

Taylor had not yet spoken to his family when he sent me an email on Monday night. His lawyer Kelley Henry, a supervisory assistant federal public defender, had shared the news with his sister, whose birthday is Christmas Eve. Recounting their exchange, Taylor said, “My sister cried, saying this was the BEST birthday gift for her.”

Henry, who still represents people on Tennessee’s death row, wrote in a statement that she was “profoundly grateful to President Biden for his extraordinary act of mercy and grace.” She expressed hope that the commutations would serve as an example to state executives like Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee. She wrote, “The death penalty is a relic of the past and should be left there.”

Wither the “False Promise”

Biden’s 37 commutations were historic — a sweeping act of mercy never seen before from a U.S. president. Although his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama presided over a de facto moratorium on federal executions, due in part to the inability to procure drugs for lethal injection, he commuted only one federal death sentence, along with that of one man on military death row. Of the 13 people executed by Trump, 10 of them had sought clemency from Obama before he left office. 

In his statement announcing the commutations, Biden, who reimposed the moratorium immediately upon taking office, made clear he did not wish to repeat Obama’s mistake. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted,” he said.

Although Biden ran on an anti-death penalty platform in 2020, many advocates had quietly worried that he would leave office without taking action. Over his decades in government, Biden made a name for himself as a “tough on crime” senator who did more than almost anyone to expand the federal death penalty in the first place. 

Pressure on Biden to make good on his vow to end the federal death penalty came from all quarters, behind the scenes at the White House, and in public demonstrations. Last week, activists and death row family members appeared alongside Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., at a briefing on Capitol Hill. 

After the commutations were announced, some argued that Biden did not go far enough. Members of the abolitionist group Death Penalty Action called on him to commute the sentences of the remaining three men on federal death row, who include Dylann Roof, the self-declared white supremacist who murdered nine parishioners at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina. In his statement, Biden characterized the three men denied clemency as guilty of “terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”

Death Penalty Action Board President Sharon Risher, who lost her mother and cousin in Roof’s massacre, was emotional in a Zoom call for reporters on Monday morning. 

“I need the president to understand that when you put a killer on death row, you also put their victim’s families in limbo with the false promise that we must wait until there is an execution before we can begin to heal,” she said.

Among those who represent people facing execution, however, each life spared was a source of celebration — and palpable relief. 

Veteran attorney Margaret O’Donnell, who has spent decades advocating for people on federal death row, described a flurry of phone calls from men whose sentences were commuted.

“Over the years, I have learned their life stories, shared their fears, known their pain of living in solitary confinement so far from those they love and have come to deeply appreciate how they do their best to live meaningful lives,” she told me. 

O’Donnell had spent part of her time since Trump’s execution spree coordinating a visitation program to help death row families stay in touch with their loved ones. Earlier this year, I met Rose Holomn, who had made use of the program so that her son, Julius Robinson, could see his father for the first time in years. In January, she told me she felt betrayed by Biden: “He didn’t keep his promise.” 

In a phone call Monday, however, Holomn was exuberant. She saw the news around 8 a.m. on the Fox affiliate in Atlanta, where she lives. 

“I ran around the house — ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jesus!’” she said. 

For 27 years, she has only seen her son through plexiglass; no contact is allowed at death row visits. Now she was overjoyed at the thought of being able to hug him sometime in the near future. 

Though many questions remain about what comes next, Holomn sounded undaunted. She helped her son survive death row for nearly 30 years. She asked me to include something in my article: “Be sure to put in there: ‘A mother’s love goes a long way.’”