Axios reports that Biden “is commuting the sentences for 37 of the 40 people on federal death row.” The 3 remaining are “Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who helped carry out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history.”
“The move spares the lives of people convicted in killings, including the slayings of police and military officers, people on federal land and those involved in deadly bank robberies or drug deals, as well as the killings of guards or prisoners in federal facilities,” according to Fox News.
I find this to be a moral abomination. Biden says
"Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss," Biden said in a statement. "But guided by my conscience and my experience, ... I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level."
But this is tantamount to saying that the values of the lives of victims of cold-blooded murderers varies according to the motives of the murderers, a moral abomination. Are the lives of victims of racists and terrorists more valuable than the victims of bank robberies or drug dealers? Are the victims of the Mother Emanuel AME Church, the Boston Marathon, and the Tree of Life synagogue more valuable than the lives of police, military personnel, or prison guards? Is the suffering of those victims’ families less “unimaginable and irreparable” because the killer was only some “ordinary” cold-blooded murderer rather than a racist, terrorist, or antisemite?
If Biden had commuted all of the death row sentences, we could at least say he acted consistently on principle, albeit by circumventing the rule of law [again]. Hard as it may be to believe, Joe Biden may have reached a new moral low with his selective commutations.
Related Reading:
The Boston Bomber and the Death Penalty Debate
The Devaluation of Life in New Jersey
Amnesty International Shows It's Stripes
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