President Joe Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of all but three death row inmates to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, briefly citing Donald Trump’s bloodlust as a motivating factor.
“In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted,” he said in a statement.
He did not commute the sentences of Dylann Roof of the 2015 Charleston church massacre, Robert Bowers of the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue mass shooting or Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. In his statement, Biden pointed to the exception for “terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder” in his administration’s moratorium on federal executions.
The move comes on the heels of his granting clemency to 1,500 people who were serving out their sentences in home confinement and issuing pardons to 39 more earlier this month. He’s also issued sweeping pardons for low-level marijuana offenses, and for members of the military convicted for having gay sex.
Biden’s pardon powers came under intense scrutiny when he pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, who had been awaiting sentencing on federal gun charges and tax evasion.
Biden’s protection of his son, his (infuriatingly) tacit acknowledgement that Hunter wouldn’t be safe under the Trump administration, extends to this clearing out of death row. Trump has advocated for expanding the use of the death penalty, and killed a whopping 13 federal inmates during his first term, the most of any president in the modern era.
Democrats have, lately, lost their footing on the threat of a Trump restored to full power, beaten down by their election losses, convinced that normal people can no longer be moved by his brutality. Biden only alluded to Trump’s thirst for violence in a passing quip, and never spelled out why he felt compelled to shield Hunter from the vengeance of Trump’s Justice Department.
Democrats’ inability or unwillingness to communicate Trump’s thuggishness empowers him to act with impunity. But Biden’s clearing of death row, like his pardon of his son, was indisputably an act of grace for people who would have been in grave danger under the coming Trump regime.
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