On 17 January 2017, three days before leaving office after eight years in the White House, President Barack Obama commuted one military death sentence and one federal death sentence. The prisoner in each case will now serve life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. There are more than 2,800 men and women on state death rows in the USA. On 17 January 2017, Virginia’s Governor Terry McAuliffe denied clemency for one of them. Ricky Gray was killed in Virginia’s death chamber the following evening.
