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I have previously discussed why I think the anti-death penalty stance is not just incorrect, but evil. This morning, I have received news that what I consider the most pro-crime administration of my lifetime has done something that I thought was unthinkable, and has commuted the death penalty sentences of 37 of the 40 federal death row inmates:
I am, as they say, triggered. For an administration filled with pro-crime sentiments and excuse-making for evil people, this probably tops the charts. I am disgusted by Biden's handlers. Here's the list of federal death row inmates. Absolutely none of the usual reasons for opposing the death penalty even begin to make sense for these guys. People worry about sentencing someone that's wrong accused to death - did they get it wrong in these examples?
They just somehow accidentally tabbed the wrong guy for murdering a prison guard? Really could have been anyone? Or perhaps you're concerned that it should only be reserved for the worst people, which is why Roof has to go. OK:
I'd love to hear the explanation for the parents of that preteen girl why their child's life wasn't every bit as sacred as the victims of Bowers and Roof. Why does he deserve a commutation? Perhaps it's because she was just an individual, so her life doesn't really deserve to be repaid with retributive justice, in contrast to Roof's victims. On an intuitive level, almost everyone knows that Dylann Roof deserves to die and that the only miscarriage of justice will be that it takes decades of fighting with demonic attorneys to get it done. Somehow, a bunch of otherwise decent people have convinced themselves that while Roof is sufficiently evil that he just deserves to die, there are probably a bunch of other death row inmates that don't. I believe this is because they're just not aware of the facts of those cases. Let's look at one of the commuted sentences:
How many people, knowing that information, would say that it's important for the President to spare these guys from execution?
There is no coalition that I have more sincere contempt for than people that spend their lives trying to avoid the execution of men like Kadamovas. There are so many issues where I grant a difference in preferences, values, evaluations of policies, or genuine mistakes. On this one, I am just sincerely angry at everyone that disagrees with me. The Biden administration has done so many things that I disagree with, but most of them still fall into that category of normal political disagreements. Denying the victims of these crimes the only justice that could have been done is evil.
I guess I'll make an argument against the death penalty, as I haven't heard anyone make this argument yet in this thread.
The biggest reason I personally can see to oppose the death penalty is that no government can be trusted with life or death powers over its citizens, as every government serves only its own interests, as opposed to the interests of its peoples (for what it's worth, this also means I am opposed to eugenics, MAID, and similar programs). Given that around 50% of the time, the government is run entirely by people I would consider to have morally abhorrent views (while the majority of the remaining time, it seems to be run by people who are solely interested in enriching themselves), I'd rather not have someone deciding that posting wrongthink is worthy of death, while sexual assault of a child warrants a second chance, all because of who did it.
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Relevant: https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1871378878981398841
"I am a supporter of the death penalty proposal with the racial justice provision, I think it's better with it, but also even without it."
"Biden crime bill in front of us calls for the death penalty in 51 offences... President's crime bill calls for the death penalty on 46, the difference is negligible."
I think the people saying 'oh Biden is a Catholic so he's anti-capital punishment' may be right but there is no 'Biden' to speak of. he used to love the death penalty. Earlier still he said he didn't want his kids to grow up in a racial jungle, he said there was no need for more nigger bigshots, today he's in love with the racial jungle. He goes and says 'oh yeah the white proportion of the US is falling and that's the source of our strength'. He'll say and do anything.
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Funny how the Biden administration says and does this while simultaneously pursuing federal charges to make sure that Luigi Mangione can get executed. The death penalty seemingly only applies when you attack important people, not regular citizens.
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This is just silly. The whole reason people justify a blanket principle of abolitionism grounds that instances of wrongful execution occur is because it's always going to be too fraught and stupid to have an 'oh well these guys are some extra special category of really definitely guilty' category.
It was, of course, but the whole reason this has happened in this ad hoc and stupid way is precisely because of people like you whining 'how could you let that one off the hook!', so they just didn't want the political fallout of commuting the most high profile and emotive cases. I'm afraid the voters are to blame, again - see the reaction to the commutation of the sentence of that judge. I think in his heart Biden probably wanted to pardon Roof but his political advisors were worried about the fallout for the Democratic brand more broadly.
As above, the point isn't about them specifically - it's that making ad hoc exceptions to the exercise of a principle would have been dumb, and it continues to be dumb about Roof (though I don't blame Biden too much for not following it all the way through in light of the whiners).
If anything I think the reverse. If one has a principle that the death penalty is wrong, it would be - and is - a bit cowardly not to extend that even to the most contemptible criminals, otherwise what kind of principle is it? One has to respect people who bite unpopular bullets in order to remain morally consistent.
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Elect a Catholic, get Catholic stuff. Weird he's going to let those other three guys remain on death row. Not that I particularly care about Biden's ideological consistency.
I'm not in love with Biden doing this, but it doesn't make my top 100 list of complaints against him specifically or Democrats in general.
The pope specifically requested clemency for all of the people on death row in the US a week or two ago. Biden excluding three people is not in compliance with that request, as I think you note.
It is I think worth noting that 1) the anti-death penalty turn in the Catholic church is controversial, to say the least and 2) Biden has shown no signs of consistent Catholic principles, even abortion aside. He is not some kind of James Martin SJ-style consistent leftyCath warrior.
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Catholicism has historically been pro death penalty and catholic societies have had rates of death penalty far higher than any society today. The issue isn't "catholic stuff", the issue is that the pope is barely catholic.
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Yes, Biden is famous for his respect for catholic teachings. Cant forget his anti abortion efforts!
Why do you think Biden, let alone his religion, has anything to do with this? The man has severe dementia. America has been ruled by a figure head for the last 4 years.
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I dunno, how many Catholics are there? Obviously they don’t all support abolishing the death penalty, but it’s clear that a significant fraction do. They’ve got coherent reasons and everything. How are you so sure that they’re the ones endorsing evil?
Would you be more or less angry if he’d blanket-commuted all 40?
There's actually a pretty small minority of US Catholics who agree that opposition to the death penalty is necessary to be a good Catholic, or who oppose the death penalty for that reason. I suppose it's possible Biden is in that category, but the odds are against him being some sort of principled Catholic left type.
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Doesn’t this create a pretty big opening for the remaining three to get their death sentences overturned on the basis of unfair or prejudiced application?
The power of pardons of the president is unbound. Acts of congress can't restrict it.
The power to commute a sentence is unbound, so outside of an aide dragging Biden's unconcious hand to draw the signature (and maybe not even then), there's no way to put Kadamovas back on the firing line.
But there's a cruel and unusual punishment argument as fewer and fewer executions are being actually brought, under Furman v. Georgia-style logic. I don't think there's five (or even four) votes in favor of Furman's logic today, and there are some process reasons that these particular appellants might not even get to a court hearing... but a lot of reasons that they're still going to spam pro se and maybe even seriously-funded attempts to bring that lawsuit forward.
Were there any uncharged murders for which he could still be tried?
Even the most sympathetic court would have to call that double jeopardy. Murdering all those people would fall under the same act framework in Blockburger.Only two, Nick Kharabadze and George Safiev appear to have been murdered during the same act.
Rita Pekler was murdered while targeting George Safiev previously.
Meyer Muscatel and Alexander Umansky were murdered on different days as part of different acts unconnected to the other murders.
I wouldn't think Blockburger would necessarily preclude now charging any previously uncharged murder.
Under dual-sovereignty were CA inclined surely it could prosecute.
You are right sir, I misremembered. Edited my post.
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There’s also an equal protection under the law argument. If everyone else is getting their death sentence commuted as a matter of course except for you that doesn’t seem like a fair application of the death penalty, even if it was the result of a Presidential pardon.
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I mean, US justice hasn’t been properly retributive in a long time. I don’t know that it matters that these men will die of old age in prison instead of getting executed in a few decades.
The big thing is the three he didn’t commute- it seems like he should have commuted all forty(what’s the political consequences- he doesn’t get re-elected?).
Yeah, he refused to commute the three for whom it would be most politically inconvenient to commute: the Boston Marathon bomber, and two racists. Imagine the headline: "President Biden commutes sentence of white supremacists."
Whatever anti-death-penalty views our lame duck president holds, they very much do seem limited by political expediency.
Biden also pardoned some neonazis(there are a lot of them on federal death row).
Interesting. Perhaps the main factor really was “have people heard of this guy.”
Which really says a lot about equal justice — you’re victimized in a high profile case and the president may let your attacker be executed, but if no one’s ever heard of you who cares what happens to your assailant.
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To be fair he should do this if you believe that politicians should try to live up to their campaign pledges. This is from 2020:
"Eliminate the death penalty. Over 160 individuals who’ve been sentenced to death in this country since 1973 have later been exonerated. Because we cannot ensure we get death penalty cases right every time, Biden will work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example. These individuals should instead serve life sentences without probation or parole."
Biden has been against the death penalty for some time, but was unable to eliminate it entirely. He should probably do it for all 40, but the 3 he hasn't are obviously problematic from the POV of some of his supporters, so he has compromised somewhat. That part can be critiqued if you like, but he has a democratic mandate to minimize the death penalty.
Whatever you think of it, he was democratically elected with a public stance against the federal death penalty. Elections do have consequences. As they will when Trump takes over and is more zealous about the death penalty. So it goes.
For what it is worth I am reliably informed Biden himself was pushing for this, while many of his advisors thought it would be a bad look for many of those on the list. In the end the compromise was to leave out the three who from a publicity pov were thought to be most problematic.
Also, many of your examples you are just axiomatically assuming they did get the conviction right. It is entirely possible (though not likely!) the wrong person was convicted. Why could a mistake not be made for the murder of a prison guard? Even just glancing over a few I see an example where one perp claims to have brain damage and another was inducted into dealing drugs at the age of 7, first arrested at 9 and was smoking crack before they were a teenager. You really can't see any reason why some people might think that even if they shouldn't be let free that maybe killing them is not helpful? That they might look at that person and think, they had no chance from the get go?
As well, part of the progressive stack argument is that the system will sometimes railroad individuals, and that law officers have been shown to sometimes lie to get convictions. Is your position there is absolutely zero chance one of these people is actually not guilty?
If you are angry about these people not being killed surely you must be aware there are people who are equally angry about the death penalty and would say that yes it is important for these people to be spared the death penalty. Thus it has no real bearing on anything beyond your own personal feelings. Whether you are angry about it or not has no bearing on whether it it is the right or wrong thing to do, or whether your argument is compelling or not.
I want to be clear, I am not against the death penalty myself. I think it is a useful tool when used judiciously. But I can certainly see why many people, Catholic or otherwise are against it in totality. I'm not angry at Trump for supporting more use of the death penalty and I am not angry at Biden for thinking it shouldn't be used. Both are reasonable understandable positions. Why be mad about that?
All the dumb stuff they say to pander to the base? No, that's the last thing I want them to do.
Unless they're pandering to me. In which case I'll be mad they didn't follow through.
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I don't understand the point of this post, apart from venting about your outgroup. Sure, the omissions from the commutation list are notable for being obviously due to consideration for CW optics, but is there no explanation you can think of for being against the death penalty that is not being "pro-crime" or thinking that there is a possibility of punishing the wrong person? This is not the first time this topic has been discussed on this forum, or elsewhere, but you add no new arguments, dismiss the wealth of existing arguments for and against (seemingly out of conviction that tapping the "evil" sign about those you want to see executed should be all the argument one needs?), and do little to even encourage others to have a healthy discussion, by declaring your contempt and anger for those who disagree with you and throwing around colourful invectives like "demonic".
Biden was not acting "against the death penalty". He didn't commute the sentence of every person on death row, which that would imply. He was selective.
How is that not acting against?
He's not acting based on moral opposition to the death penalty.
Less-than-maximum opposition is still opposition, though. Compare abortion clinic picketers, or Israel boycotts.
It's like being about to commute someone's sentence, and being told "I'll give you this cheeseburger if you don't". If he took the cheeseburger and accordingly didn't commute the sentence, it's obvious that the initial decision to commute the sentence wasn't based on any strong principle.
"Because people would get upset about it" is an extremely weak reason to change his mind if he really did it out of moral opposition to the death penalty, weak enough that I'd question how significant that opposition was. (For that matter, I doubt more people would get upset about it than did over pardoning Hunter. And if they got mad, so what? He's out of politics; they can't hurt him.)
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That doesn't follow either. At best you can say he is not ONLY acting based on moral opposition to the death penalty.
Indeed as far as I know he was talked out of commuting all of them as a compromise. So while he is acting on moral opposition to the death penalty he is letting that be partially compromised by politics. That perhaps loses him some points for following his principles no matter what, but does not change that the act is based upon moral opposition to the death penalty in the first place. As pointed some of those commuted were neo-nazis. Not exactly his political allies.
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The reinsertion of it into the public discourse with the commutation of 37 murderer's sentences makes it of broad public interest in a way that it usually isn't. The details of the action (including the arbitrary selection of three sentences not commuted) reinforces my position that this is actually all quite evil. A decade ago, I would have said that I understand my opponents even if I disagree with them. A couple years ago, I would have still acknowledged that while I disagree, there are points to be made around the level of certainty that should be required. Now, with the pardoning of guys like Kaboni Savage and Iouri Mikhel, I think this is a good time for people that were concerned about executing innocent men to reflect on whether that's actually what we're talking about or whether they've gotten sold a bill of goods by people with very different motivations than their own.
With regard to the anger, I have to grant that I find it genuinely challenging to react to something like this without it. To do so would feel completely hollow to the point of outright dishonesty on my part. I can attempt to have a polite, rational discussion with people, and I think I mostly succeed at doing so even when I'm frustrated or angry. Nonetheless, I don't think I would be doing anyone a service if I pretended that my views on this particular action are just coldly rational, driven by nothing but clear-eyed and consistent deontology. That doesn't seem to me to be a requirement for participating in discourse either; most people would not be affronted by a poster referring to Bashar al Assad as evil, even if they disagree, for example.
There is obviously some venting involved here. Even so, if someone's actual position is that it's good that Kaboni Savage has been pardoned, that Joseph Biden has demonstrated his wisdom and mercy, and that I'm mistaken about the evil being done, there seems like plenty of space to do so. I interpret the disinterest in doing so as less about my failings as a poster and more about how actually indefensible this executive action is.
Their sentences were commuted to life in prison with no possibility of parole. That's no pardon. In the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, that would have been the you-don't-get-to-be-a-martyr (unlike-your-brother).
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I do not understand why you consider keeping your reaction to yourself to be dishonest - a forum is not a YouTube reaction video where the point is to feel a simulacrum of human connection by empathising with the uploader's expressions. There are things that can only be done in the textual format precisely because I don't need to know how you feel about the issue, and you don't need to know how I feel about it, and so we can exchange thoughts that otherwise never would make it past the wall of irreconcilable feelings on the issue between us. If you do however think that putting your feelings out there is necessary for your posts to not be "hollow", or something that looks like a number of seething people talking to each other while pretending to be automatons is unpleasant to you, there are still ways you could have done it that would have made more allowance for a conversation that is not one-sided to proceed. Just say that you are angry, and are finding it hard to stay level-headed, and then move on; and if you think that the rest of your post would not have enough to fill the hollow if that anger were filleted out of it, then maybe the post does not need to be made.
You may not appreciate what it would be like to post in an environment where this level of emotional polemic is levelled against you. I think I could take a shot, just for the impression: "The way I see it, the pro-death-penalty crowd has more in common with the common murderer than their supposedly 'pro-crime' opposition. They both agree that some of their problems are best solved by killing, and only disagree about the right targets. What they have is essentially a coalition of the bloodthirsty (as seen by the correlation between the pro-war, the pro-death-penalty, and the pro-gun-rights who get giddy fantasizing about shooting a black kid running away with their TV) and the victims and their relatives. I have nothing but contempt for the former, who cynically seduced the latter at their morally weakest." Would you feel particularly encouraged to engage in a discussion with an opening post like this? What if it were upvoted at +30 and bathed in supportive responses?
If this forum had a sizeable contingent of Alawites who had part of their family slaughtered by Islamists and saw him as the rampart that stood firm for years saving the rest of them from the same fate, while the world community was hypocritically slandering him and heaping apologia upon the "democratic rebels", or people like my Telegram-addicted relatives who believe that the people in Assad's "torture chambers" are largely the burn-infidels-alive-in-cages types, perhaps they would be.
What principle is fairly argued in a hostile frame like this? This is as much of a concession of space for disagreement as it would be if someone posting an anti-gun-rights diatribe, based on several instances of contemptible people being sold guns after some pro-gun decision (and perhaps some people disliked by the pro-gun group still not being sold one, too), invited people to argue for the wisdom and civic-mindedness of selling a gun to the most repulsive instance of a gun owner.
Yeah, I'd be fine with it. I have, in fact, argued in venues where I'm on the opposite side of the prevailing mood. I wouldn't say I feel welcomed, but my conviction on the matter is quite strong and I think my positions win on the merits. To wit:
I have no problem biting the bullet on that and saying that I agree that some problems are best solved by killing and we only disagree about the right targets. From there, I'm comfortable proceeding with the reasons that I think it is qualitatively different to execute men that have been tried by a jury of their peers and convicted of murdering a half dozen children than to fantasize about vigilante justice. I expect that some people will disagree. I even expect that some would do so passionately! This does not much dissuade me. I think that my actual arguments and the specifics of the individuals involved serve to clarify that claims of bloodthirstiness are just not correct.
I'll again bite the bullet and say that I think this is a fine argument tactic. If someone doesn't want to defend legal firearms ownership for convicted child rapists, then we're getting somewhere! They're agreeing that there are constraints to their position, that it's not categorical. Likewise, if someone that is generally against the death penalty agrees with me that maybe it's bad to offer categorical commutations for the worst people you've ever heard of, well, we're getting somewhere! Alternatively, they can bite the bullet and say that their only real problem with Biden's decision is that he didn't extend the same mercy to the remaining three, we are at least clarifying where we all stand. I am not actually willing to extend a friendly welcome to that position, but it exists and people can argue for it if they wish.
To return to your original objection:
The point is that the United States President just did something that I consider morally abhorrent as a discretionary executive action. This raises the salience of the issue and highlights special cases of it. Regardless of where someone settles on death penalty policy questions, this action should absolutely merit discussion. If you think I'm the wrong person to bring it up because I'm going to say that I'm pissed off and the people doing this are evil, I just disagree.
Why not? It is basically the stance of the Catholic Church. Why can't you be friendly to people who have opposing views to you (or is it just this specific view for some reason)? That's a real question, as that's the more interesting part in all this in my view. I am friends with people who believe all abortion should be outlawed AND people who think it is the woman's choice. And yes with both supporters and opposers of the death penalty. Why shouldn't we extend a friendly welcome to both? They are both pursuing what they think to be best morally. And without access to the underlying moral logic of the universe, I can't tell either one of them for certain they are right or wrong.
If it was proven to you tomorrow that the death penalty definitively increases the evil in the world and you now opposed it would you then be unable to be friendly to people who held your previous position?
I'm friends with many people that I disagree with, including on this topic. I wrote that I'm not willing to extend a friendly welcome to the position, and I stick by that. As covered, I don't think it's a simple difference, but one of the worst, most immoral positions that is within the realm of normal beliefs in the United States. I'm fine with being friendly with people that hold very bad positions, but I am not inclined to dress up my opinion of the position in niceties. My reaction to is comparable to my reaction to someone saying that minor-attracted people should be allowed to satisfy their urges or that it's actually fine to rob someone if they have more money than you. I'm capable of having the discussion, but my reaction is that these positions really are just evil and need to be defeated.
So the idea that any killing is wrong is one you equate with thinking pedophilia is ok? That seems wildly skewed. I'm not a Christian let alone a Catholic but I think the position that killing is wrong is definitely morally defensible certainly an order of magnitude more than the idea that pedophilia is ok.
Why do you think it is so evil to not want to kill people? I can certainly understand from a utilitarian perspective that you might argue the benefits outweigh the costs for certain people, or that executing people might be the lesser of two evils, but why is not wanting to do it literally evil in and of itself?
Generally I find your views very understandable (even if I don't always agree with them) but I am honestly somewhat surprised and confused that you hold such an absolute position on this that NOT wanting to kill people is itself evil.
I don't know. I was trying to write up a coherent response, but I think @ControlsFreak did it better below than what I was accomplishing. My reaction to it is as innate as it is against pedophilia (which is not to say that the two positions are equally bad, just that it seems equally obvious to me). This is absolutely not a utilitarian position and a contrary utilitarian argument wouldn't change my mind even a little bit.
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But not as, like, a rational, 'seeking Truth' sense of "morally defensible", right? I had thought that somewhere between here and here we shed the concept that moral concepts were rationally defensible, determinable, etc. in some sort of objective way, and it was instead just people's emotions/feelings/vibes. So when you ask:
you're actually asking, from your meta-ethical perspective, something like, "Why is three green?" You have completely hidden first principles that make your question incoherent and impossible to answer. That really undercuts what I think is an implied argument from incredulity, where one asks what is merely a difficult question from a position of first-impression skepticism, being open to a plausible answer and interpreting a lack of a complete and convincing answer as evidence against the position. No, your prior meta-ethical position is such that this question is impossible to answer, either for or against, because you actually think (when pressed) that your own question is an incoherent one. You're not asking it to rationally grow closer to some truth of the matter.
...or have you changed your mind, and you now think that there is some sort of concept of "evil in and of itself"? If so, what would that concept be?
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I am reading /r/politics right now where every comment that isn't jeering like what you describe has been <deleted> by mods, and I could go to any other social media site on the planet to get exactly the same experience. This community was literally on reddit experiencing that posting environment, and fully appreciates it. I do not understand this post.
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I saw the news and read through this list, this table should comprise those inmates who killed multiple people:
This is insulting. A mass commutation for lesser crimes I would be more understanding of, but for the list of commutations to include Kaboni Savage, a person so befitting his name a court and jury in Philadelphia, who I think it's fair to assume would be highly sympathetic were there something to be sympathetic about, sentenced him to death. The office of President, because Biden didn't choose to do this, could hardly act in a more patronizing manner, and also, with the pardon of Savage, one more plainly ideological. It's pure political dunking, not a stand against the death penalty, else he would have issued one for every inmate. Nor was it a commutation based on actual severity, Savage was certainly more harmful than Bowers, and with the success of his drug dealing he might have negatively impacted more lives than Tsarnaev, who probably only missed a commutation because there would be universal uproar followed shortly by a guard strangling him in his sleep. Roof and Bowers, well, we all know why their sentences weren't commuted.
It is amusing to me that the only crime considered worthy of death is being on the wrong end of a current thing murder. Things aren’t looking good for our boy Luigi.
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If Dylann Roof claims that he achieved sexual gratification while shooting could Biden commute his sentence too?
Btw - do you think that some of those would be rejected? Life without parole is crueler and harsher sentence than death in some conditions.
On the latter point, very few people in the position to get death penalties seem willing to accept them rather than appealing endlessly. I don't know what the actual numbers are on that front, but the desire to simply stay alive seems very strong.
For what it's worth on my end, I am personally opposed to deliberately creating conditions that are crueler and harsher than the death penalty. As I have probably mentioned in one of these threads where I hold forth on the death penalty, I don't view the death penalty as a way of maximizing harshness, but as a cap on the allowable suffering and extent of retributive justice meted out. Many people instinctually feel that a clean death is too good for some killers, and I understand that sentiment, but one of the reasons I so strongly support it is precisely to subvert the temptation to descend into inflicting excessive cruelty on the condemned.
It does occasionally happen, most notably with Gary Gilmore, that a condemned prisoner asks to be executed and still needs to go through large portions of the appeals process for baffling reasons.
Edit- wrote down the wrong Gary.
Gary Gilmore too. Subject of the (long-winded and overcooked) book The Executioner's Song.
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Had it been universal it would have been very Catholic of him, which isn’t something you can often say.
Awhile back I learned from The Pillar that his marriage isn’t even canonically valid. He and Jill were married in some random non-Catholic chapel, and never obtained a convalidation.
Jill also has a still living husband from a previous marriage that was never annulled.
So forget the politically charged question of whether he ought to be denied communion for his many public statements that conflict with church teaching. He ought to be denied for the plain reason that many others are: he’s publicly living in sin.
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How much can this be attributed to Biden? Does he really have a full grasp of all the decisions that are being taken in his name just now?
I can't wait for the tell-all memoirs to come out so we can find out who has really been in charge the last 4 years.
It's unbelievable they were trying to run Biden for another four year term.
Oh come on. Every gray cardinal wants a puppet ... it would have been amazing for the shot callers.
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As stated, I am disgusted by his handlers.
Either way, I expect that he is capable of understanding what a commutation is and probably understands what he's done. That he pardoned Hunter strongly suggests that he still has some measure of ability to make the decisions himself if he really wants to.
So you did, I missed that.
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I would have grudgingly found it admirable if he'd reduced everyone's sentence based on pure conviction that the death penalty is invalid. That's what the pope would have had him do.
But leaving a few on there is just evil gloating that they don't oppose the death penalty, just want it applied by an NPR opinion poll, and only as vengeance for crimes against party-aligned ethnic groups.
I think it's more prosaic than that, they presumably say all the outrage about that judge in the last batch of commutations/pardonings and decided they couldn't be arsed to go through with all that again (and potentially hurt the Democratic brand) with Roof et al.
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Exactly. Either you are opposed to the death penalty OR you are saying only certain crimes are worthy of the death penalty and most but not all of these crimes were not worthy.
The question then is explain why
I think Biden on his own would have commuted every sentence except maybe Tsarnaev’s. His aides, I’m sure successfully pressured him out of pardoning Roof and Bowers because they honestly believe a white man killing black or Jew is a worse crime than the reverse; I’m guessing the neocons in the White House were opposed to commuting tsarnaev because terrorist.
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To be fair, Biden still has a month left in office, and he could very well commute the other three sentences at a later date. It would actually make political sense to do it this way, assuming the following is true:
Republicans wouldn't have given him credit for ideological consistency if he had indeed commuted the other three sentences.
Bowers, Tsarnaev, and Roof are the only three people on this list the average American has ever heard of.
Accordingly, the commutation of any of these three sentences would, on its own, be bigger news than the commutation of all of the others.
Biden's critics will revel in pointing out the lack of consistency.
Commuting the three biggest names on their own, at a later date, will generate bigger headlines than if they were part of a blanket commutation.
So, commute the death sentences of 37 people no one has ever heard of and see what the fallout is. Then wait a few weeks and commute the remaining three on the eve of the inauguration. If the story gets lost in the shuffle then it's proof that nobody really cares much and that the political fallout from the other 37 commutations will be minimal, and that they were only really a story due to a lack of other news in the run-up to Christmas. On the other hand, if the story becomes a big deal, it will take some of the wind out of Trump's sails at a time when his inauguration would otherwise be dominating the headlines. Especially since he'd theoretically be responding to Republican criticism about his own lack of consistency, and this probably wasn't the kind of consistency that they had in mind. Not saying this will actually happen, just idle speculation on how Biden could play this to his advantage.
That sounds like 3D chess except it’s losing the entire way.
Step 1: Biden allows child killers to get out of death penalty but not others. Reaction: Biden doesn’t think child killers deserve death but if crimes have a political dimension then death penalty is fine. Not a good look.
Step 2: Biden folds to pressure leading to commuting the 3 not commuted today. Reaction: Biden would rather let guys off who deserve death because Biden decided a child killer should not be killed and when he couldn’t stand the fallout somehow decided to let other people off who deserve death.
Except this isn't about Biden; it's about Trump. Biden's reputation as a politician isn't going to improve regardless of what he does. He could have signed death warrants for everyone on the list and it wouldn't matter. So whether or not Biden is willing to commute the sentences of baby killers isn't the issue here. If he had excluded one more name from the list the Fox News comment section wouldn't be full of people trying to discern some kind of general principle, and had he commuted all the sentences they wouldn't be talking about how good of a Catholic he is. the fact that there's an incongruity on a list of pardons isn't something anyone is going to care about for more than a few days. As far as Biden is concerned, his political career is over anyway, so whatever he does now is ultimately irrelevant. And it's not like Democrats are still trying to prop him up as one of the party greats.
Signing an order commuting the sentences of three of the country's most notorious criminals and timing the press release so it hits just before Trump is about to take the oath of office is just a giant middle finger, nothing more. It would piss Trump off to no end to have his parade rained on like that, and provide a distraction from his time in the spotlight. It's not 3D chess as much as it is being petty, but Biden can afford to be petty at this point.
If Biden tried to do that, then it reminds me of the meme “Jokes on you I was just pretending to be retarded.”
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I suspect that this was his original intent, but at some point in the process someone rushed into the room and said "sir, on Xitter they're saying that this means you're going to free [blah blah blah specific examples]", and he adjusted accordingly, but didn't see the ideological contradiction. Idiocy.
To be clear, even the explanation that it's about party-aligned ethnic groups, as @SteveKirk suggested doesn't get to a coherent set of principles. Let me introduce you to Kaboni Savage:
An infant and three other kids, presumably black, murdered over gangland bullshit.
No, the principle at play here seems to be whether the names involved were sufficiently well-known or not. There's no pattern to be found other than that, as near as I can tell. The commuted sentences include black, white, and Hispanic individuals. The victims denied justice are similarly broad across different ethnicities, across such identities as part-time postal workers, 12-year-old girls, the literal black baby mentioned in the above paragraph, and Russian immigrants targeted by their co-ethnic serial killers. The Boston bomber did not get a commute, which also puts a monkeywrench in the protection of aligned groups theory - it really does seem to be as simple keeping sentences if the public is actually familiar with the evils that were done.
Simple answer. Kabobi is black, so it doesn't count as a crime against blacks as a group
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