Biden to commute sentences of nearly all men on federal death row
... Biden will commute the sentences of 37 of the 40 men condemned to death, the second mass clemency in the weeks following the pardon he issued to his son, Hunter Biden.
The president called the death row commutations, which will instead sentence them to imprisonment for life without the possibility of parole, consistent with his administration’s moratorium on executions.
“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 Monday. “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.”
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Biden added that the commutations were also spurred by Trump’s fervent support for capital punishment, saying he could not allow the incoming administration to restart executions for those he had spared over the last four years.
Thirteen federal inmates were put to death during Trump’s first term. In some instances, he took cases to the Supreme Court to defeat their final legal appeals.
Suck on that, TRE45QN.
Biden’s commutations exclude three prisoners convicted for what the president characterized as terrorism or “hate-motivated mass murder”: Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and mass shooters Robert Bowers — who killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh — and Dylann Roof, who killed nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
If he was going to exclude 3 those are good choices.
:violin: :violin: :violin:
The move does nothing for people sentenced to death in state courts, which far outnumber the federal tally. The Death Penalty Information Center counts 2,241 people on death row at the state or federal level in the U.S. or face the possibility of being resentenced to death in a new trial.
:problem:
Biden’s decision follows a Justice Department recommendation that he grant the commutations and amid increasing pressure from a range of groups that have advocated for a series of clemency actions in his final days. Though the administration has done little to follow through on Biden's 2020 campaign-trail support for abolishing the death penalty, it did halt all executions and conducted a review of capital punishment that the Justice Department is now on the verge of publishing.
DonOLD will love that.
... Several Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, had already blasted the prospect of the commutations for granting mercy to some of the nation’s most notorious murderers....
Is life without parole really "mercy"? If me, I might prefer execution.
As of
2000 12.1% of the US was Black and 12.5% of the US was Latino.
... Rev. Sharon Risher, the daughter of Ethel Lance, one of the nine victims killed by Roof during bible study, as well as the cousin victims Susie Jackson and Tywanza Sanders, called on Biden to halt the death sentence of her mother and cousins’ killer during a congressional briefing panel hosted by U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., earlier this month.
“I learned that my mother and my loved ones were gunned down by a white supremacist trying to start a race war. He is not an innocent man on death row, but he is a man. He has humanity, and I have been willing and worked hard to give forgiveness to [him],” said Risher. “I do not want him to die. To spend the rest of his life in prison? Yes. But not for him to die in the name of my family. We are urging you, President Biden. I hope you hear my words. I hope you get to hear the pain in my voice.”
:think:
... Martin Luther King III, who publicly urged President Biden to commute the sentences of federal death row inmates, praised the decision as marking a “historic day.”
King added, “By commuting these sentences, President Biden has done what no President before him was willing to do: take meaningful and lasting action not just to acknowledge the death penalty’s racist roots but also to remedy its persistent unfairness.”
“Today marks an important turning point in ending America’s tragic and error-prone use of the death penalty,” said Bryan Stevenson, the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, which provides legal representation to prisoners who may have been wrongly convicted of crimes, poor prisoners without effective representation and others who may have faced unfair trails.
“By commuting almost all federal death sentences, President Biden has sent a strong message to Americans that the death penalty is not the answer to our country’s concerns about public safety,” said Stevenson. He added, “I commend President Biden for recognizing that we don’t have to kill people to show that killing is wrong, that we can and should reduce violence in our communities by refusing to sanction more violence and killing in our courts and prisons.”
Jamilla Hodge, CEO of Equal Justice USA, said President Biden’s commutation strikes a “blow against racism and a system that has always targeted Black people.”
Hodge continued, “This action, aligned with your more recent pardons, reaffirms our shared belief in the dignity and value of all human life and the possibility of redemption in everyone.”
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:puke-left: :bs:
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