Only three inmates were left to face the death penalty, including convicted Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Robert Bowers, who was sentenced to death for killing 11 worshippers and wounding seven during a shooting at a the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.

Joe Biden believes the death penalty "must stop" at the federal level, except for those guilty of terrorism and mass murder motivated by hate, the White House said.

The commutation decision falls short of Biden’s original, and unprecedented, broader 2020 campaign promise to seek to entirely eliminate federal capital punishment, and Monday’s announcement leaves in place three death sentences for some of the most notorious killers in recent U.S. history.