Biden's Death Row Commutations May Be Silly and Illogical But We

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Monday, someone acting on behalf of the husk of what used to be Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 prisoners on the Federal Bureau of Prisons’s death row; see BREAKING: Biden Commutes Federal Death Row Sentences. In a message accompanying the announcement, Biden said:

I’ve dedicated my career to reducing violent crime and ensuring a fair and effective justice system.

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.

The three men left on death row are Robert Bowers (Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018), Dylann Roof (Charleston, South Carolina, church shooting in 2015), and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (2013 Boston Marathon bombing).

Like so much else about Biden’s four years of misrule by proxy, this statement is logically incoherent. For instance, today, the alleged shooter of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Luigi Mangione, was arraigned on charges contrived to permit the death penalty if he is convicted. No one, even Magione, thinks he was engaged in “terrorism,” and yet that specification is slopped onto a murder charge just for that purpose.

Using the rationale in the announcement, the four men on the military’s death row should have also benefitted from his beneficence because, as commander-in-chief, Biden has the same authority over those prisoners as he has over federal prisoners. These are

Ronald A. Gray – Convicted in 1988 for multiple murders and rapes while stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Gray is notable for having his execution date set and then stayed multiple times.
Nidal Hasan – Known as the “Fort Hood Shooter,” Hasan was convicted for the 2009 shooting at Fort Hood, where he killed 13 people and injured 32 others. He was sentenced to death in 2013.
Timothy Hennis – A former Army master sergeant, Hennis was convicted in 2010 for the murders of a woman and her two daughters in 1985 near Fort Bragg. He had previously been acquitted in civilian court for the same crimes before the military recalled him to active duty from retirement and used recently developed DNA evidence to get a conviction at a court-martial.
Hasan Akbar – Convicted for the 2003 attack in Kuwait where he killed two servicemembers and injured 14 others by lobbing grenades into tents and firing his weapon. He was sentenced to death in 2005.

Arguably, Akbar and Hasan make the gate for a death sentence under the theory of lex Bidenis, but Gray and Hennis should have received commutations. Note that these men have been on death row from 14 to 36 years. The last military execution was in 1961.

Some see a larger problem with Biden’s decision in that it seems like a continuation of his arbitrary use of the pardon power.

First, he used it on behalf of his son after indignantly vowing to the nation, repeatedly, that he would do no such thing — along the way, avoiding the admission that he was complicit in the influence-peddling that resulted in the tax charges against his son, and shamefully claiming that Hunter Biden had been selectively targeted when, as he well knew, the Biden Justice Department had selectively protected both Hunter and the president.

Next, he issued a record raft of clemency acts — 1,500 in a single day — which were a combination of (1) gifts to connected Democrats convicted of eye-popping fraud and corruption offenses and (2) a determination to use the pardon power, not for individual grants of clemency, but to achieve categorical sentencing reductions that Congress has declined to enact.

Now, Biden has done something similar, and in its way more unseemly, on death sentences.

There is no valid constitutional objection to capital punishment. It is referred to expressly and approvingly in the Constitution (the government may deprive a person of life provided there is due process of law). It was a staple of law enforcement, in the United States and around the world, when the Constitution was adopted. If, as progressives claim, the nation has evolved beyond the death penalty, there would be an easy way to make that manifest: Congress could enact a law prohibiting the death penalty. But it hasn’t because, far from a consensus against capital punishment, the public broadly approves of it.

Unable to get the constitutional or legislative change that aligns with his stated policy preference — a preference in the execution of which Biden, as he has been wont to do for a half century, insults our intelligence — the president has abused the pardon power. He has usurped Congress’s power to make the laws, which includes the authority to prescribe punishment for federal criminal offenses.

I’m more of the school of thought that sees the power to punish as an executive prerogative rooted in the Divine Right of Kings. We allow this power, knowing that it is susceptible to abuse, but also with the knowledge that mercy must be part of any criminal justice system if it is to be respected. I also think the same claims of corrupt use of the power to pardon or commute sentences will be levied at President Trump when he exercises that power over the January 6 defendants.

While I agree that the men he has released from sentence of death were very deserving of that punishment, I think we also have to be realistic and say that none of them were in any immediate danger of being executed (h/t USA Today).

Shannon Wayne Agofsky (Texas): 20 years on death row.
Billie Jerome Allen (Missouri): 26 years on death row.
Aquilia Marcivicci Barnette (North Carolina): 26 years on death row.
Brandon Leon Basham (South Carolina): 20 years on death row.
Anthony George Battle (Georgia): 27 years on death row.
Meier Jason Brown (Georgia): 21 years on death row.
Carlos David Caro (Virginia): 17 years on death row.
Wesley Paul Coonce, Jr. (Missouri): 10 years on death row.
Brandon Michael Council (South Carolina): 5 years on death row.
Christopher Emery Cramer (Texas): 6 years on death row.
Len Davis (Louisiana): 19 years on death row.
Joseph Ebron (Texas): 15 years on death row.
Ricky Allen Fackrell (Texas): 6 years on death row.
Edward Leon Fields, Jr. (Oklahoma): 19 years on death row.
Chadrick Evan Fulks (South Carolina): 20 years on death row.
Marvin Charles Gabrion, II (Michigan): 22 years on death row.
Edgar Baltazar Garcia (Texas): 14 years on death row.
Thomas Morocco Hager (Virginia): 17 years on death row.
Charles Michael Hall (Missouri): 10 years on death row.
Norris G. Holder (Missouri): 26 years on death row.
Richard Allen Jackson (North Carolina): 23 years on death row.
Jurijus Kadamovas (California): 17 years on death row.
Daryl Lawrence (Ohio): 18 years on death row.
Iouri Mikhel (California): 17 years on death row.
Ronaldo Mikos (Illinois): 19 years on death row.
James H. Roane, Jr. (Virginia): 31 years on death row.
Julius Omar Robinson (Texas): 22 years on death row.
David Anthony Runyon (Virginia): 15 years on death row.
Ricardo Sanchez, Jr. (Florida): 15 years on death row.
Thomas Steven Sanders (Louisiana): 10 years on death row.
Kaboni Savage (Pennsylvania): 11 years on death row.
Mark Isaac Snarr (Texas): 14 years on death row.
Rejon Taylor (Tennessee): 16 years on death row.
Richard Tipton (Virginia): 31 years on death row.
Jorge Avila Torrez (Virginia): 10 years on death row.
Daniel Troya (Florida): 15 years on death row.
Alejandro Enrique Ramirez Umaña (North Carolina): 14 years on death row.

If we aren’t going to be serious about using capital punishment, and by serious, I mean something on the order of a year between conviction and execution, then I think we should get rid of it. It doesn’t serve as a deterrent. It doesn’t really even serve as retributive justice because the offended community will have forgotten the crime. I’m not opposed to killing murderers on general principle,e but warehousing them for two or three decades before getting on with it makes no sense to me.