Before leaving office, former President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of several killers on death row. Now, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi wants to reverse those decisions and tell state officials to go after the death penalty for the inmates.
Bondi wrote a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) employees about the commutes. In the letter, she said that Biden’s decision to grant the commutes “undermined our justice system and subverted the rule of law.”
“The commutations also robbed the victims’ families of the justice promised — and fought hard to achieve — by the Department of Justice,” Bondi wrote. “The Department of Justice is directed to immediately commence the following actions to achieve justice for the victims’ families of the 37 commuted murderers.”
“Explore opportunities to provide a public forum for the victims’ families to express how the commutations affected them personally,” Bondi said, calling it an “important step” toward building trust and holding people accountable, Fox News reported.
Bondi said she would tell U.S. attorneys’ offices to use state law instead of federal law to go after people whose death sentences had been reduced. She said this would only happen “where appropriate and legally permissible” and “after consultation with the families of the victims and other interested parties.”
“The Capital Case Section shall assist the United States Attorney’s Offices in implementing this directive,” Bondi’s letter stated.
“Third, the Federal Bureau of Prisons is directed to ensure that the conditions of confinement for each of the 37 commuted murderers are consistent with the security risks those inmates present because of their egregious crimes, criminal histories, and all other relevant considerations,” she added.
In late December, Biden took 37 people off of federal death row and changed their sentences to life in prison without the chance of release.
Biden only left three mass killers on death row: Dylann Roof, who killed nine people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina; Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who set off the bombs at the Boston Marathon; and Robert Bowers, who shot up the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.
Bondi made headlines last week when the Justice Department issued a letter stating that it has determined many removal restrictions for administrative law judges to be unconstitutional.
The decision follows growing frustration within the Trump administration over judicial roadblocks to its executive actions.
In the letter, acting U.S. Solicitor General Sarah Harris informed President Pro Tempore Chuck Grassley (R-IA) that the Justice Department “has concluded that the multiple layers of removal restrictions for administrative law judges” violate the U.S. Constitution.
The letter means the administration “will no longer defend” the removal restrictions in court or litigation.
For reference, Harris cited a 2010 decision from the Supreme Court, which said that granting “multilayer protection from removal” to executive officers “is contrary to Article II’s vesting of the executive power in the President.”
The Department of Justice also argues that the federal law limiting the dismissal of administrative law judges to cases of “good cause” violates Article II of the Constitution. That federal statute limits “the President’s ability to remove principal executive officers, who are in turn restricted in their ability to remove inferior executive officers.”
According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the federal government employs administrative law judges to oversee laws and regulations across various sectors, including banking, antitrust, immigration, and interstate commerce. These judges differ from Article III federal judges, who preside over federal courts and hold positions explicitly recognized by the Constitution.
In recent years, the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that federal agencies lack the broad regulatory authority they have long asserted, as noted in a Reuters report.
One such ruling found that the Securities and Exchange Commission’s use of in-house administrative law judges to adjudicate enforcement actions was unconstitutional.
Chad Mizelle, chief of staff for Attorney General Pam Bondi, shared a copy of the letter on X and told The New York Times that the administration is taking the necessary steps to challenge the “unelected and constitutionally unaccountable” administrative law judges.
“In accordance with Supreme Court precedent, the department is restoring constitutional accountability so that executive branch officials answer to the president and to the people,” he added.
Mizelle said that the administrative law judges have “exercised immense power for far too long.”