As was anticipated after reports that were issued over the weekend, “President Joe Biden announced” today that he has commuted the sentences of 37 convicted murderers, thus taking them off federal death row. They will now serve out life sentences in prison, being housed, fed, given medical attention and more at taxpayer expense. This was done deliberately to foil the announced intention of President-elect Donald Trump to carry out the verdicts of juries and the courts.
“Biden’s statement”—this is in quotation marks because he didn’t write it, probably doesn’t understand it and quite possibly never read it or approved it—reads,
“Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.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. 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 good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
Ethics observations:
1. As with most public grandstanding regarding the death penalty, the 37 commutations made no sense, particularly in the context of the statement attributed to the President. The act and statement were also cowardly. If the intention was to “stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” then why didn’t Biden “stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level” as long as he could by commuting the sentences of all those on federal death row? His pardon power act did not save three federal prisoners awaiting execution: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of two brothers responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013; Dylann Roof, the insane White nationalist who massacred nine people at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.
This is the typical hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty of anti-death penalty cult. It purports to be an absolutist movement, but its adherents, like “Biden” here, do not want to be bothered by inconvenient things like integrity, consistency, logic or courage. The sentiment is “It is wrong for the government to play God and kill any human being…except when I think that a particular human being should be an exception.” I am sure someone will do research into who the order has spared, and we will see other multiple murderers, people who killed without remorse and with extreme cruelty, vicious psychopaths who killed for the fun of it, or who murdered children, or who slaughtered their victims after rape or torture. These don’t warrant executions, Biden says on behalf of the Wonderful Woke who refuse to acknowledge that there is a point where an individual has forfeited the benefits of civilization, but the single factor of “hate” elevates murder from really, really bad to intolerable.
Oh. If you say so.
Those three villains were spared because the Democratic Party lacks the guts and integrity to risk the certain public backlash if it included them in its hypocritical “capital punishment is always wrong” pander.
2. Among the categories of murderers spared by Biden’s commutations are those who killed prison guards or other inmates. This means, in effect, that convicts already in prison for life have license to murder anyone they encounter in prison without penalties—after all, you can only be executed once. The 8th Amendment prevents the “kill anyone else and your execution method will be changed from lethal injections to being gnawed to death by rabid squirrels” deterrence policy.
3. This latest Biden flub falls in to broad unethical category of Presidents who have been rejected by the public in an election deliberately acting to obstruct the policies of the incoming POTUS the public endorsed. The Biden White House is seeking to do that on as many fronts as possible. It is far from the first time in our history this has been done, but it constitutes the metaphorical sticking of a dirty thumb in the electorate’s eye.
I hold that the practice is unethical. Between Election Day and Inauguration Day, an ethical transfer of power should include no actions by the lame duck POTUS taken to deliberately undermine the will of the people as expressed in the election.
4. Senator Chris Coons, one of the most intellectually dishonest and irresponsible members of the Senate (and one who has been lying outright regarding the mental acuity of President Biden), issued the obligatory weak arguments against capitol punishment in the U.S. including the worst of the worst, “what it says domestically and to the world about our values.” The Left’s “Let’s emulate Europe!” fallacy is used to promote socialism, nationalization of industries, suppression of free speech, elimination of gun ownership, drug legalization, legal prostitution, open borders and nanny states generally among other bad ideas. The United States was created as a rebel nation with a unique culture, and should remain so. I don’t care what the world thinks about our values. They have served us well.
5. Finally, even though last week it was definitively demonstrated that President Biden has not been and is not running the Executive Branch and is being manipulated and used by persons unknown to advance their own policy agendas, and that the news media has been fully complicit in allowing those persons unknown and unelected to make a travesty of our Constitution by doing so, reporters and Democrats went right back to pretending that Joe Biden is engaged, in charge, and making decisions like the commutations. What real journalists should be doing is investigation who is really making these decisions rather than continuing the myth that Biden is the decision-maker.
But we have no real journalists, do we?
____________
Footnote: There are over 2,000 people facing executions who were convicted in state courts. The President has no power to stop those. Good.
Ethics Alarms 
What if his commutation was all smokescreen to ease the obviously cynical and abusive move to grant a wide and generous pardon to his son (and vicariously protecting himself).
By granting broad commutations to depraved murderers this sets a veneer of generosity which makes Hunter’s pardon then seem “par for course” and not as egregious.
I for one have wavered for the better part of two decades on the death penalty.
I waver between two poles: “it’s obviously ethical to have a death penalty since some crimes deserve death” and “we can very rarely if ever prove *beyond even a possible doubt* that we’re using state power to kill someone who might have a possibility of being not guilty- so much so that even if in 10,000 executions we execute 1 innocent person, that’s one too many”.
I never waver towards a pole around the idea that “a death penalty is inherently unjust or unecessary”
In order that the President can correct miscarriages in the federal criminal justice system, he must be able to give pardons and commutations to the undeserving. Nor can he be subject to being prosecuted for obstruction of justice in issuing a pardon or a commutation, even one that is unwise beyond debate.
Political retaliation is the only remedy we can afford.
What?
Not the Bee has a list of some of the spared:
https://www.notthebee.com/article/president-biden-just-commuted-the-sentences-of-37-federal-death-row-inmates
Setting aside, as you pointed out, that the President is unlikely to have made this decision, it takes no particular courage to commute the death sentences of most of the inmates in question. That he did not commute the two White Supremacists and the terrorist only meant that his handlers feared the reaction of the party’s base supporters both internally and externally. This had nothing to do with the President’s faith, his sense of right and wrong, any argument for or against the death penalty. This was done to spite Donald Trump.
That makes it unethical.
He comes in and his first act is to spite Trump by unsigning pretty much all of his executive orders, and now his almost last act is to spite Trump by sparing a bunch of killers who deserve to fry. I hope history remembers him as the “Spite president.”
I don’t know what Jack will reveal, but I will simply remember President Biden as the “Worst President.”
Because he is. If he’s too incompetent to know what he signed with these commutations, then he’s the worst…maybe in a tie with Wilson. If he IS competent, then he’s definitely the worst.
Mrs. OB, not a lawyer, has raised the issue of whether any actions taken by Biden are enforceable given his lack of competence. Does the executive have the power of the presidency, or does that power reside in his surrogates? A pretty huge constitutional question, non?
No kidding.
Dems are ethiucally estopped from whining about school shootings.
School shootings are the result of guns, Michael, not the shooters.
note that they bring up only school shootings, as if school was some sort of hallowed grounds.
Are people murdered outside of school somehow less dead?
Can we bring them back to life if we gather all seven dragon balls and summon ShenRon?
That’s why I’m opposed to the whole hate crime bit.
What about the families of those victimized by the 37? Do they hurt less because they were not killed by a terrorist or demented race hater? It puts ‘value’ on the lives. I hate any of the laws regarding that.
Courts have tied themselves in legalistic knots trying to rationalize how “hate” speech is 1A protected but added penalties for “hate” crime are not punishment for thought.
Maybe the issue will make it back to a court without Rehnquist.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m guessing that most of these on death row were declared guilty in a jury trial…correct?
If so, then it’s likely that the juries – made up of normal, everyday citizens – knew that the death penalty was on the table. The criminals for which Jack listed the crimes (in the subsequent post) are capital crimes (at least they are in quite a few states).
So if these were declared guilty by a jury, then this is really an example of the U.S. government nullifying the will of the people; their will to purge themselves of the basest, most evil actors from their midst.
Sure, it’s not as though any of these criminals were re-released into the population. But if a handful of them manage to escape – which happens on occasion even with the best of security – and commits more atrocious crimes, who is held responsible? Should the commuter be held criminally responsible? How is this different from the parent (the overseeing “government authority” in a household) being held criminally responsible when a gun “escapes the home” in the hands of a crazed teen, who then shoots others?
I would like to start by writing that I am against capital punishment. I have several reasons for being against capital punishment. My reasons include the cost of capital punishment as compared to life imprisonment and that I believe that justice is often unobtainable. Among my reasons for opposing capital punishment is also how politics can become involved in what is supposed to be an impartial process.
I submit that the main reason for the pardons and commutations is that Biden and probably more accurately those associated with Biden directly are seeking to secure a positive legacy. I argue, that those close to Biden, and likely to some extent Biden himself, realize that history is unlikely to be kind to him or his administration. In a “hail Mary” Biden and his staff chose pardons and commutations to paint Biden as a benevolent leader. Of course, there are exceptions to his benevolence based in part on the notoriety of the individuals and their crimes, not that they or their crimes are worse than others on death row.
11th-hour actions like Biden’s pardons and commutations are a sign of desperation not thoughtfulness or humanity.
We might disagree on the death penalty – since I am for it – but it seems we’re in agreement that these pardons are not benevolent. President Biden’s legacy must be deep in the toilet if lessening the sentences of three dozen brutal, vicious killers and rapists is supposed to “improve the situation.”
I think you’re both right. I for one say “plug in the chair.”
I realized that the anti-death penalty crowd was not necessarily committed to abolishing it in all cases. Case in point: in 1998, three savages caught, chained, dragged, and dismembered James Byrd. The brutal, violent, vicious nature of the murder, motivated by racism and pure evil, shocked just about the entire state of Texas. His family, I must admit, exercised a hell of a lot more restraint than I could or would have.
All three of the monsters were convicted, one is serving life in prison in exchange for his testimony against the other two animals, who were convicted and sentenced to death. Both are, as they say, sleeping with the fishes.
Texas has a death penalty watch, who employs lawyers to file many post-judgment and pre-execution motions seeking clemency, new trials, resentencing, etc. Yet, when these two fuckers were scheduled to be executed, no death penalty abolitionists would come to their defense (true, one waived all post-conviction appeals and did not fight execution, going to his death unrepentant and defiant). When asked, they shuffled papers on their desks, looked under the ink blotters, and talked about how overwhelmed they were with other cases and didn’t have sufficient resources to dedicate to those cases.
The death penalty is always immoral or it is not in all cases. Yet, when Biden commutes federal death penalty sentences except in 3 instances, where the murders are motivated by “hate” and abolitionists do not protest executions even in horrendous cases like the Byrd case, then it is political. It means that some perpetrators of crimes against certain victims are more worthy of extreme punishment than others, which is to say that all crime victims are equal but some are more equal than others.
jvb
Jack, you caught my first point (it practically smacks you in the face): if you condemn the death penalty, why not all 40? Maybe he is still trolling his Catholic credentials without trying to appear to Pro-Life.
He was a public defender? When? 50 years ago? Or was that another delusion?
Another thing that practically knocked me over: while pardoning them, he condemned them? WHAT?! If you condemn them, why are you pardoning them? He is practically admitting he does not understand, or does not appreciate the pardon power itself. Okay, the pardon power itself is a complicated thing to justify. It defies justice and is just at the same time.
So, yes, he can commute all of the death penalty cases* on principle** but is a mealy-mouthed rhetorical flourish to say that he condemns them. He should simply say that he sort of believes the death penalty is unconstitutional (usually) and that he has the obligation to uphold the Constitution and the pardon power lets him do that (mostly). Just say that it is the wrong sentence for (37 out of 40 of) them.
BUT, DON’T CONDEMN THEM WHILE YOU ARE PARDONING THEM!
-Jut
Another thing that practically knocked me over: while pardoning them, he condemned them? WHAT?! If you condemn them, why are you pardoning them?
ARGH! Sometimes I have a point that I planned on making in the post and then forget to include it. That was an example. Gee, maybe Joe is writing his own material.
I always find it strange that people who only buy free range eggs because it is cruel to keep hens in cages are quite happy to leave humans … ??? … in cages for life, and consider it to be more humane than execution.
They feel that the hens are innocent.
“I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.“
Is he saying he is pro life?
I would recommend caution with statements like that. One possible side-effect is blindness, caused by the rest mist of Lefty heads exploding.