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Notes -
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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