Why Joe Biden should grant mercy to some of America’s worst criminals

With President Joe Biden’s term winding down, the subject of clemency has heated up. Since then, Biden commuted the sentences or pardoned 1500 people in what the Associated Press labeled the “biggest single-day act of clemency.” With less than a month remaining in Biden’s time in the White House, many are asking, “What next?” For anyone opposed to capital punishment, the answer is clear: Biden should commute the sentences of everyone on the federal death row. The Justice Department has… shown a continued willingness to use it in certain cases.” It “has authorized the continuation of only two death penalty cases he inherited, including another mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue motivated by hate.” That is why those who do not want the president to commute all federal death sentences are spotlighting Roof, Tsarnaev, and Bowers. can be justified by no motive other than to resist the death penalty across the board.” “It would,” the Editorial Board contended, “be one further shabby coda to Biden’s presidency … if he simply nullified the law imposing death on terrorists, mass shooters, and other perpetrators of monstrosities in his own misguided quest for absolution.” It “is not mercy; it is vandalism.” We need your help to stay independent Subscribe today to support Salon's progressive journalism Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby echoed this theme. As he put it, If the president grants a mass clemency, “it would mean commuting the death sentences of the mass murderer who slaughtered black churchgoers at Mother Emanuel in Charleston….and the perpetrator of the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.” McConnell took pains to point out that none of them “were victims of systemic racism” or had “inadequate counsel.” With these comments, he was trying to foreclose arguments that a Biden commutation could be justified to rectify miscarriages of justice.