On Monday, Biden commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 death row inmates, switching their penalty to life without parole.

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.

The third, Dylann Roof, was sentenced to death in 2017 for a mass shooting that left nine black parishioners dead at the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.

While the move was widely praised by human rights groups such as Amnesty International, it was quickly condemned by some Republicans, as well as Trump’s transition team and political allies.

In a statement, Trump communications director Steven Cheung said that “these are among the worst killers in the world and 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,” he added. Trump cannot undo the commutations when he returns to the White House next month.

Texas Republican Chip Roy posted on X that the decision was “unconscionable” and an abuse of power “to carry out a miscarriage of justice”.

Another Republican, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, said that “when given the choice between law-abiding Americans or criminals, Joe Biden and the Democrats choose criminals every time.”

Some family members also expressed anger.

On Facebook, Heather Turner – whose mother was killed in a 2017 bank robbery – called the commutations a “gross abuse of power”.

“At no point did the president consider the victims,” she wrote. “He, and his supporters, have blood on their hands.”

The commutations do not apply to the approximately 2,200 death row inmates convicted by state courts, over which the president holds no authority.