On Monday morning, the White House announced that President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 prisoners, all murderers and some multiple murderers, on federal death row. (Yes, while most death penalty cases are handled by the states, the federal government has a death row for violators of federal crimes.) Biden commuted the federal prisoners’ sentences from death to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In a statement, Biden claimed to be acting out of principle and conscience. He plainly said he did not want the federal government to execute anyone, and he specifically did not want the next president of the United States to allow the federal government to execute anyone. He never mentioned who that president might be, but he was referring, of course, to President-elect Donald Trump.
“I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” Biden said. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
It is hard to believe, but even in such grave matters of law and conscience, Biden’s decision was all about Trump.
Biden is planning his last trip as president next month. It will be to Italy, where he will meet Pope Francis at the Vatican. The pope recently prayed that the sentences of death row prisoners in the United States “be commuted or changed.” Vatican News also reported, “Anti-death penalty activists and associations have been imploring President Biden to use his clemency powers before he leaves office to spare the lives of about 40 federal death row inmates who are at peril of imminent execution when the next president takes office.”
The pope, of course, speaks from a religious perspective. His position is consistent; he wants all death penalty prisoners to be spared. But Biden was not so consistent, because while he commuted the sentences of 37 prisoners, he left death sentences in place for three: Dylann Roof, who murdered nine people in a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015; Robert Bowers, who murdered 11 at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018; and Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who killed three and injured more than 200 in 2013.
Biden decided that Kaboni Savage, convicted of murdering 12 people, including a family of six in a firebombing, deserved mercy, while Roof, Bowers and Tsarnaev did not. Biden decided that Ricardo Sanchez and Daniel Troya, convicted of murdering a young mother, father and their 4- and 3-year-old boys, deserved mercy, but Roof, Bowers and Tsarnaev did not. Biden decided that Jorge Avila-Torrez, convicted or raping and murdering two girls, age 8 and 9, and later murdering a 20-year-old woman, deserved mercy, but Roof, Bowers and Tsarnaev did not.
What’s going on? Politics, of course. Roof, who is white, targeted and murdered black victims, while Bowers targeted and murdered Jews. They killed out of hate, while Savage, Sanchez, Troya and Torrez killed out of … what? Something motivated them to kill, to destroy lives over and over, but Biden decided that it was somehow not as bad as Roof and Bowers. Biden threw Tsarnaev in the still-deserving-death group because he killed while committing an act of terrorism. What united all three – Roof, Bowers and Tsarnaev – was that their cases were extremely notorious, heavily reported and touched on public opinion about civil rights. Showing those killers mercy could have set off a political firestorm for Biden.
So Biden came up with a rationale to commute some and not others. “[President Biden] believes that America must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level, except in cases of terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder – which is why today’s actions apply to all but those cases,” the White House said in a statement.
Americans are divided on the death penalty. But except for a time in the 1960s, majorities have always favored capital punishment. A majority favors it now; according to Gallup, 53% support the death penalty, while 43% oppose.
The prisoners on federal death row – it is a little ironic of this matter that some of them are there courtesy of legislation supported by then-Sen. Joe Biden – all committed heinous crimes. Their crimes were beyond heinous in some cases. They have received full legal due process. The American judicial system worked in their cases, and all of them deserve the legally proper sentence they received.
The distinction Biden made among killers was borne of political expediency. He has already weathered one clemency storm, when he pardoned his son after promising not to do so. Now, he is trying to avoid another. It won’t work; moments after the commutations were announced, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas noted, “Democrats can’t even defend Biden’s outrageous decision as some kind of principled, across-the-board opposition to the death penalty since he didn’t commute the three most politically toxic cases.” Biden’s move was, as Cotton said – in a critique likely to be heard a lot in coming days – an act of “politically convenient justice.”
