Illinois doctor among 37 federal inmates whose death sentences were commuted by Biden

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - Just days before Christmas, President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences of nearly all inmates on federal death row, reducing their sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The move affects 37 men, including Ronald Mikos, a 76-year-old Illinois doctor. Mikos, the oldest man on federal death row, is only the second person sentenced to capital punishment in the history of Chicago’s Dirksen Federal Courthouse.

Mikos was convicted in May 2005 for the murder of a woman who was set to testify against him before a federal grand jury.

A former Lake County man's death sentence was also commuted.

Jorge Avila-Torrez, a former marine from Zion, was sentenced to death in 2009 for killing a sailor at a Virginia military base. His DNA also linked him to the murders of two young girls, ages 8 and 9, in Zion four years earlier.

One of the girls father was inititally charged and spent five years in jail before Torrez was convicted. 

In a statement, Biden condemned the murders and expressed grief for the victims, but added, "In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted." 

Biden imposed a moratorium on federal executions in 2021.

President-elect Donald Trump, however, has promised to reinstate the death penalty.

Three individuals remain on federal death row: Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh; Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine Black parishioners at a Charleston, South Carolina church; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the two Boston Marathon bombers.