Biden's rationale behind Christmas present for death row killers foggy at best: expert

President Biden's rationale behind his move to commute the sentences of 37 of 40 federal inmates on death row remains unclear, according to crime data expert John Lott.

"If he thinks the death penalty is wrong, it's not exactly clear where the line was drawn." "While generally, Biden revealed his disdain for the death penalty, he does believe — and his actions prove it — that there needs to be a death penalty for some." Audrey Conklin is a digital reporter for Fox News Digital and FOX Business. Email tips to audrey.conklin@fox.com or on Twitter at @audpants.

"When President Biden came into office, his Administration imposed a moratorium on federal executions, and his actions today will prevent the next Administration from carrying out the execution sentences that would not be handed down under current policy and practice," the White House said.

The three death-row inmates that did not meet Biden's requirements for having their sentences commuted are: Robert Bowers, the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter who killed 11 people in 2018; Dylann Roof, a White supremacist who killed nine Black parishioners at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who worked with his now-dead brother to carry out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds.