President Joe Biden is considering commuting the sentences of “most, if not all” of the country’s death row inmates, according to a modern report.
The news comes as a shock Wall Street Journal column, citing sources close to the president who believe a final decision on the matter could be announced by Christmas Day.
The Journal points to Biden’s past as a “devout Catholic,” a trait that only comes to the fore when the president has to convince people that he is motivated by deep religious beliefs despite being a staunch supporter of abortion.
President Biden is considering commuting the sentences of most if not all 40 men on the federal government’s death row, people familiar with the matter said, a move that would hurt President-elect Donald Trump’s ability to continue the high pace of executions that has been his first term.
A broad coalition of religious and civil rights groups has urged Biden to take the step, and the effort gained momentum earlier this month after Pope Francis prayed for the commutation of condemned American prisoners in his weekly address. If their death sentences were commuted, the prisoners, all convicted of murder, would serve life sentences without parole.
The report adds that Biden was pushed in this direction by Attorney General Merrick Garland — who on Jan. 6 persistently pursued protesters and anti-abortion grandmothers praying outside clinics with maximum sentences — to close all but one of the terrorism and hate crimes cases Handful to convert.
However, the angle from which Biden is weighing the matter, given his deep-rooted Catholicism, seems to suggest that a blanket commutation might be possible.
The news comes at a time when outgoing “Squad” members, Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-MO), have vehemently insisted that the president kill those on death row of the federal government should grant an unrestricted pardon.
“Don’t stop at Hunter Biden,” Bowman said after the controversial pardon of the First Son. “Pardon the 40 people who are on death row right now to get them off death row, number one.”
Rep. Jamaal Bowman says President Biden must exploit his pardon power for death row inmates:
“Don’t stop at Hunter Biden. Forgive the 40 people who are on death row right now to get them off death row, number one.” pic.twitter.com/dGQv6krr2w
— Rusty (@Rusty_Weiss) December 3, 2024
Bush, meanwhile, wrote in an editorial for Time Magazine“If [Biden] If he truly opposes the death penalty, he must do everything in his power to stop it for good. His most effective means is to extend clemency to everyone on federal death row.”
It’s difficult to determine which death row inmates might be spared by Biden’s possible act of clemency if he doesn’t listen to outside voices insisting on blanket clemency. There is little difference between the absolute evil involved in these individuals’ cases.
Than that New York Post reports: “Five of the men murdered children, nine slaughtered fellow inmates and one killed a prison guard with a hammer while he was serving a life sentence for raping and murdering his wife, a U.S. Marine.”
These aren’t even the most notorious people on the death bench.
One of those people is Robert Gregory Bowers, the man who entered the Tree of Life Synagogue in suburban Pittsburgh on October 27, 2018 and opened fire on the congregation with a semi-automatic rifle. Ultimately, he killed eleven people and injured six others.
There are 40 prisoners on federal death row, all of them murderers. Biden is reportedly considering commuting all sentences to life in prison. But he could make some exceptions. On what basis? From WSJ: https://t.co/8IurRPEu2f pic.twitter.com/d1A0WWbaWc
— Byron York (@ByronYork) December 21, 2024
Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is also on death row. Together with his brother Tamerlan, he detonated homemade pressure cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon in 2013, killing three people and injuring over 260.
They later shot Sean A. Collier of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology police six times, killing him.
Some very prominent Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, favored a discussion of restoring voting rights to Tsarnaev.
REGARD: Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders give extreme answers about Boston Marathon bomber’s voting rights
Also on death row is Dylann Roof, the man behind one of the most heinous racially motivated mass shootings in the country’s history.
Roof murdered nine African-American churchgoers on June 17, 2015, during a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
The Post also openly wonders how Biden’s potential clemency would affect ongoing cases where the death penalty is implied, including Payton Gendron, who murdered 10 African Americans and three in a mass shooting at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store in 2022 more injured.
Federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for related federal hate crime charges.
Imagine for a moment if Donald Trump had tried to grant clemency to mass murderers of racial hatred. But here we have the left openly cheering these people for a second chance at life by spitting on the graves of their victims.
It should be noted that the Wall Street Journal just released a scathing report with countless sources indicating that President Biden has been mentally incompetent from day one and has essentially served as a puppet of his superiors.
Whoever is forcing Biden to act on this issue — be it Garland, the “Squad,” or a few newly minted progressive college interns — is definitely evil.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) resented the idea during a speech on the Senate floor earlier this week to commute the sentences of people sentenced to death.
“Let us be clear about what converting these sentences would mean,” he said. “That would mean that the laws passed by Congress and applied by our judges and juries have no value.”
“That would mean that the president cares more about progressive policies than the lives of these murderers,” McConnell added. “It would mean that society’s strongest condemnation of white supremacy and anti-Semitism must give way to legal mumbo-jumbo.”
Accordingly Gallup poll As of October 2024, about 53 percent of Americans still support the death penalty.
