President Joe Biden has commuted the death sentence of a Michigan man suspected of murdering several people in the 1990s.
In 2002, Marvin Gabrion was convicted of kidnapping and murdering 19-year-old Rachel Timmerman in 1997. Her body was found in the Huron-Manistee National Forest, weighed down by cinder blocks in Oxford Lake. An autopsy determined Timmerman had died by drowning.
Timmerman and her 11-month-old daughter Shannon disappeared two days before Gabrion was scheduled to go on trial for allegedly raping her.
Prosecutors believe Gabrion may have killed four other people, including 11-month-old Shannon Verhage.
Gabrion was tried in federal court because Timmerman’s body was found in a national forest.
President Biden is commuting the sentences of Gabrion and 36 other federal death row inmates, shifting them from execution to life without the possibility of parole.
According to a press release from the White House, the president said the U.S. should stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level, except in cases of terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.
“I’ve dedicated my career to reducing violent crime and ensuring a fair and effective justice system,” Biden said in a statement.
"Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss," the statement read. "But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level."
President-elect Donald Trump condemned the commutations in a statement released by his communications director, Stephen Cheung: "This abhorrent decision by Joe Biden is a slap in the face to the victims, their families, and their loved ones. President Trump stands for the rule of law, which will return when he is back in the White House after he was elected with a massive mandate from the American people."
There are now just three federal inmates are still facing execution. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.
