Innocence Project Co-founders Urge President Biden to Commute the Federal Death Row

(Washington, D.C. — Friday, December 20, 2024) In a letter released today that was sent to the White House, Innocence Project co-founders Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld urged President Joe Biden to commute the death sentences of the 40 people who are currently on federal death row before he leaves office on January 20, 2025. The letter was also signed by Centurion Ministries founder Jim McCloskey, adding to the growing chorus of supporters for the campaign which includes faith leaders, former corrections officials, death row exonerees, civil rights advocates, business leaders, current and former prosecutors, innocence organizations, pro-life voices, families of homicide victims, intellectual disability and mental health advocates, and more. 

Since 1963, 200 individuals who were sentenced to death have been exonerated from death rows around the country. The risk of executing an innocent person has become glaringly evident, prompting public support for the death penalty to fall to its lowest in five-decades. In their letter, Mr. Scheck, Mr. Neufeld and Mr. McCloskey underscore the risk of this irreversible injustice – of  executing an innocent person – while highlighting the myriad of factors that have historically contributed to wrongful convictions and continue to pervade our criminal legal system.

“Our life’s work proves the risk of executing an innocent is unacceptably high,” they said. “Whether it be racial bias, false confessions, eyewitness misidentification, unreliable forensic science, perjury, law enforcement misconduct, or just plain human error, the innocence movement has demonstrated there are more wrongful convictions than those who toil in the system ever imagined.”

In 1992, Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld started the Innocence Project at Cardozo School of Law to use the power of DNA evidence to prove wrongful convictions. Today, the organization has helped free over 250 innocent people from prison, 23 of whom were sentenced to death. In July 2021, the Biden Administration placed a temporary pause on executions, but this sweeping movement has made it clear that the pause is not enough to fulfill the President’s pledge to end the federal death penalty. The scores of letters sent to the White House in recent weeks reflect the widespread, bipartisan concern about the fallibility of the federal death penalty system and a growing national shift away from capital punishment.