Pro-Trump prison chief calls on Biden to commute all death sentences before leaving

FIRST ON FOX: A pro-Trump former Florida prison guard who oversaw an execution is urging President Biden to commute all federal and military death sentences before leaving office.

“I voted for President Trump in all of his campaigns, and I agree with him on many of his positions, but not on the death penalty,” wrote Ron McAndrew, a former warden at Florida State Penitentiary, in a letter to the outgoing president. “I have personally written to President Trump asking him to stop seeking more executions.”

McAndrew, a self-described “legal man,” an Air Force veteran and a pro-life Catholic, said that after overseeing three electric chair executions and witnessing five lethal injections, he grew to oppose the death penalty.

While he was skeptical at first, he told Fox News Digital that he saw flames erupt from Pedro Medina's head when he was executed in 1997 in the electric chair. That incident caused an uproar in Florida and other parts of the country that marked the beginning of the end of electrocution.

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“The smoke and the flame coming down from under the helmet came out in front of my face, if it had been a few centimeters closer, it would have really burned me,” he said.

Later, he said the smell was so strong, “it was like we went to a barbecue.”

Federal investigators determined that Medina, a convicted murderer and fugitive from Cuba, died instantly — but the incident took a toll on McAndrew and at least 22 other witnesses, he said.

The incident led Florida to use lethal injection instead, but he said that type of execution disturbed the prison staff who carried it out.

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Pedro Medina, a convicted murderer, was sentenced to death and went to the electric chair on March 25, 1997. He was one of the last prisoners to be electrocuted this way after his head burst into flames, filling the room with smoke and horrified onlookers. (Archive PL / Alamy Stock Photo)

“The chest movement is an example,” he told Fox News Digital. “You can tell if you're close, and it's a killer or a gang member. You can see that they're trying to get out of their body. But the witnesses don't.” they see this, like, clean, it's a way to kill someone.

At one point, he said, he started seeing inmates killed in their sleep and drinking heavily — half a bottle of Johnnie Walker a night — as a result. Eventually, he was diagnosed with severe depression. He is now a staunch supporter of the abolition of the death penalty.

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“I feel compelled to say that there is one thing in particular that I agree with President Biden,” McAndrew wrote in his letter. “We strongly oppose the death penalty. President Biden has the power to grant clemency through the executive clemency process, and I urge him to do so immediately for everyone on the federal and military death row.”

When asked why the worst killers on death row, including Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof and Pittsburgh synagogue gunman Robert Bowers, should be spared, he asked where to draw the line and suggested they be arrested. instead everything is impossible with parole.

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“If this inmate was to live life without parole, he would be working 40 to 60 hours a week whether we like it or not,” he said. “He will be making a donation…rather than being a burden to the taxpayers, sitting in a cell receiving room service for 25 years.”

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Abraham Bonowitz, who founded the group Death Penalty Action with McAndrew, told Fox News Digital that the death penalty should not be a one-sided issue.

“Capital punishment is an abuse of the government in the worst possible way,” he said. “Anyone who doesn't trust the government to tax us properly or come up with a safe policy should have a hard time trusting a government that has the power to kill citizens.”

He also forwarded the request to Elon Musk, the future head of the new Department of Labor, if Biden rejects the letter.

President Biden, not pictured, meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024 in Washington, DC. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

“We're excited to have a cabinet chief focused on government efficiency, because this is the first time anyone in the federal government has been able to abolish the death penalty,” Bonowitz said. “No current government system is more wasteful, inefficient and ineffective than the death penalty.”

The letter comes as Trump has vowed not only to end Biden's suspension of the death penalty, but also to expand the list of crimes punishable by death to include child rape, human trafficking and the killing of US citizens by illegal immigrants.

There are currently 40 inmates on the government's death row, and they include pet terrorists, drug lords and criminals who had witnesses against them.

Tsarnaev, who killed four and injured hundreds; Roof, who killed nine in a Bible study; Bowers, who killed 11 at the Tree of Life Synagogue; and Kaboni Savage, the Philadelphia drug lord who killed 12 people — including four children who were linked to an informant — will all see sympathy under the proposal.

President Biden listens as Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani speaks in the Oval Office of the White House on April 15, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The US government has executed 50 prisoners since 1927, according to the Bureau of Prisons, including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Cold War spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. That's far fewer than states, which have executed more than 1,500 inmates in the past 50 years.

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McAndrew also argued against special treatment for death row inmates. Unlike other prisoners, they are not required to work behind bars and contribute, in some way, to their “maintenance”. They have a TV, a private cell and are kept separate from the general public.

In places like California, where death row inmates are safe from execution because of the death penalty, they also have access to the best lawyers and all the time in the world to try to fight their cases.

Feds have executed 13 federal inmates during Trump's first term, the most under any president in a century. Biden announced a moratorium on executions after taking office in 2021.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.