Biden Takes Cherry Hill Man's Convicted Killer Off Death Row

WASHINGTON, DC — President Joe Biden spared the lives of dozens of people awaiting execution on death row on Monday, including a man convicted in the murder of a Cherry Hill resident.

Philadelphia's Kaboni Savage was sentenced to death in 2013 for his involvement in the killings of 12 people in connection with a drug operation. One of his victims was Tyrone Toliver, a Cherry Hill resident murdered a decade prior.

Biden's commutations take 37 of 40 people, including Savage, off federal death row. They are now sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

In March 2003, Savage lured Toliver to a drug-packaging house in Philadelphia under the pretense of a drug deal. When Toliver arrived, Savage's associate Kareem Bluntly shot and killed him, according to court documents.

Bluntly stole Toliver's money and, one day later, transported the victim's body. Toliver was 26.

Savage was the kingpin of a drug enterprise that primarily operated in North Philadelphia from at least 1997 to 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. After Savage was indicted on drug charges in 2004, he ordered the murders of the family of government witness Eugene Coleman. One of Savage's associates firebombed the Coleman family's home, killing six people including four children.

Biden's action leaves only three federal inmates on death row: 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 national history.

"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," Biden said in a statement. "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."

In 2021, the Biden administration announced a moratorium on federal capital punishment to study the protocols used, which suspended executions during Biden's term. But his promise to end the federal death penalty went nowhere in Congress.

He took a political jab at President-elect Donald Trump, saying, “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, has spoken frequently of expanding executions. In a speech announcing his 2024 campaign, Trump called for those “caught selling drugs to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.” He later promised to execute drug and human smugglers and praised China's harsher treatment of drug peddlers.

There were 13 federal executions during Trump's first term, more than under any president in modern history.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.