President Joe Biden announced Thursday the commutation of roughly 1,500 sentences for people who served at least one year of home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside pardons for 39 Americans convicted of nonviolent crimes, marking the largest single-day clemency action in modern U.S. history.
“America was built on the promise of possibility and second chances,” Biden said in a statement. “As president, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, restoring opportunity for Americans to participate in daily life and contribute to their communities.”
The massive clemency action surpasses Barack Obama’s previous record of 330 acts of clemency before leaving office in 2017. Those pardoned Thursday include emergency response team leaders, church deacons working in addiction counseling, doctoral students, and decorated military veterans convicted of nonviolent offenses.
Biden faces mounting pressure from advocacy groups to issue additional pardons before Trump takes office in January, including for federal death row inmates. His attorney general, Merrick Garland, had paused federal executions, though they’re likely to resume under Trump, who oversaw an unprecedented number of executions during his first term.
The president is also weighing possible preemptive pardons for those who investigated Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. The unprecedented move has been under consideration for six months, though Biden has expressed concerns about the precedent it would set.
The clemency follows Biden’s controversial pardon of his son Hunter for gun and tax crimes, which garnered only 20% public approval in an AP-NORC poll. Criminal justice advocates have since pressed the administration to extend similar mercy to everyday Americans.
Prior to Thursday’s announcement, Biden had issued 122 commutations and 21 pardons, including broad pardons for marijuana possession on federal lands and former service members convicted under repealed military regulations on consensual gay sex.
