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Pope encourages prayers for people with death sentences as pressure grows for Biden to act before Trump takes office.

By Sam Levin, The Guardian

Pope Francis has called for commutations for people on death row in the US, as religious leaders, civil rights groups and current and former prosecutors urge Joe Biden to take executive action on capital punishment.

In his Sunday prayer, Pope Francis, who has been a vocal death penalty opponent, said: “It comes to my heart to ask all of you to pray for the prisoners in the United States who are on death row. Let’s pray that their sentence would be commuted [or] changed.”

pope Francis

On Monday, advocates fighting against capital punishment released letters from hundreds of leaders asking the president to clear federal death row before Donald Trump returns to office, with pleas from Black pastors, Catholic leaders, former prison officials, leading civil rights groups and mental health advocates.

Biden has been facing intensifying pressure to grant clemency to people with death sentences after he recently announced that he was using his executive authority to pardon his own son.

Advocates expect the incoming administration to be deadly if Biden doesn’t take action. In the final year of Trump’s first term, the US government executed 13 people in rapid succession, killing more people in the federal system than under the previous 10 presidents combined. The rushed process claimed the lives of people with intellectual disabilities, prevented defendants from presenting new evidence, and involved execution methods that lawyers said were torturous.

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