Thank You, Joe
Joe Biden passed record legislature that helped many who don't even know it. Now, in his final days in office, he has made another monumental decision: Commuting nearly all federal death sentences.
In a previous Essay, I extensively outlined the horrors and injustice of the death penalty in the United States. While Biden had already paused all federal executions once he got into office, he has no say in state executions, which Republican Governors continued to carry out. His 2021 pause, called a moratorium, gave all 40 inmates on federal death row time to breathe until Trump got re-elected. The former president in 2020 resumed federal executions after a pause of 20 years and executed 13 prisoners in a few months, a disproportionate amount of them were black. Human rights movements, like Amnesty and the Innocence Project, knew that Trump will resume the executions when he gets back into office next month. The calls for Biden to commute all sentences from federal death row inmates down to life sentences grew louder and louder.
If you need to catch up on why the death penalty is a form of great injustice, read: The Cruelty of the State
Biden commutes 37 death row sentences
On the 23rd of December, one day before Christmas Eve, the New York Times reported that President Biden was commuting the death sentences of nearly all (37) federal death row inmates.
In his statement, he condemned their murder but called for the end of the death penalty in the U.S. His stance against the death penalty aligns with his values as a lifelong catholic. Even Pope Francis prayed for the end of the death penalty as he told Biden in a call they had last week.
The only three people Biden left on death row were mass murderers involved in terrorist attacks like the Boston Marathon bombing. Biden had in the last weeks also issued over one thousand pardons, and activists want him to pardon even more people who were either mistreated by the system or could face political prosecution from Donald Trump. Such preemptive pardons could go to outspoken Trump critics like Liz Cheney or Trump's former Attorney General William Bar, who refused to steal the 2020 election. The latter also pop up on the “enemy list” of Trump’s new nominee for FBI director.
The death penalty is still in use in many red U.S. states, but Biden’s landmark decision to commute 37 federal death row sentences is a monumental milestone that spares the lives of 37 people. Some of them still plead their innocence.