For those who are Christian, the Christmas holy day is a good time to reflect on the virtues of mercy and forgiveness. Coincidentally, every four years it coincides with the closing days of a presidential term, a time when presidential pardons and other acts of clemency are common, in part because the political price to be paid is discounted for the incumbent, who is unlikely to run for political office ever again.1
In addition to the now customary and tongue-in-check Thanksgiving turkey pardon, on December 1, shortly after the 2024 presidential election, President Biden granted his son Hunter a broad pardon, asserting that Hunter had been singled out by his political opponents. On December 12, 2024, citing America’s promise of possibility and second chances, President Biden announced that he had pardoned 39 people and commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 others. As the public reaction to these actions has shown, such actions will often be controversial and a source of further grief to those who were the victims of the recipient’s conduct.
The President’s constitutional prerogative to show mercy is not limited to those whom he believes have been unjustly prosecuted or who have been rehabilitated. Until a few days ago there were 40 people under sentence of death for federal crimes. On December 23 President Biden announced that he was commuting the sentences of 37 of them to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
After expressing “condemn[ation of] for these murderers, grie[f] for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” the President stated that “guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.”
There has been the predictable response by political partisans and relatives of the victims who will not get to experience eye-for-an-eye justice. I, on the other hand, do not believe that President Biden went far enough; as an opponent of capital punishment in all cases, I would have preferred that all federal death sentences had been commuted.
President Biden’s statement itself did not explain the exceptions. An accompanying “fact sheet” rephrased the President’s stated belief in the need to stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level–a categorical statement–into one with an exception for “cases of terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.” Sounds to me that like some aide wanted to leave some wiggle room. Which is the President’s true position?
The death penalty is either always wrong or sometimes right. If not always wrong, the decision to impose it becomes a matter of degree. If President Biden truly believes, as his statement says, “that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” then are the three exceptions being sacrificed on the altar of political expediency?
Jay Bohn
December 26, 2024
Copyright 2024 by Jay Bohn.
- As is true for so many other things, the end of President Trump’s first term is an exception to this statement. Not only did he (successfully) repeat his quest for a second term after losing his 2020 re-election bid, but experience probably convinced him that there would be no political price to be paid for anything he did. ↩︎