A wide range of advocacy and religious groups – including the Vatican – are calling on President Joe Biden to commute the sentences of several groups of federal prisoners before he leaves office, including death row inmates, marijuana offenders and women who were sexually abused in federal prisons.
Biden granted his son Hunter a full pardon last week, prompting pardon experts and civil rights groups to ask the obvious question.
“What about everyone else?” says Mark Osler, a clemency advocate and professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law. “They could have positioned this as an act of principle that affected hundreds of people who were targeted by zealous prosecutors. There is still time for Biden to mitigate the damage this will cause to his legacy, but he will have to make significant efforts.”
While Biden had previously announced categorical federal pardons for low-level marijuana offenders, his administration still frequently disappointed criminal justice advocates who had hoped for more based on his 2020 campaign platform. After years of Biden's inaction, his son's pardon stood out even more.
“While I can understand a father wanting to save his son from injustice, we expect a president to have that perspective for all children,” says Rachel Barkow, a professor at NYU School of Law. “It is so shocking that only his child and his abysmal record are being singled out for everyone else (at least to this point). Where is the compassion and mercy for all the other people who are serving excessive sentences or have been wrongfully prosecuted or convicted?”
As Barkow and Osler in a New York Times In the editorial they co-authored in September, Biden did lowest pardon rate of every modern US president since Richard Nixon.
For the 40 inmates on federal death row, whether Biden improves his record is not a statistical question but a matter of life and death. Before Donald Trump left the Oval Office in 2021, his term in office began a six-month series of executionswhere 13 prisoners were killed.
Biden campaigned on abolishing the federal death penalty in 2020, but that promise was quickly forgotten once he was in office. While the Justice Department imposed a moratorium on executions, it continued to seek the death penalty in two mass murder cases. It would be either an act of cowardice or hypocrisy for Biden to keep all of these death sentences in place, knowing full well that the new Trump administration will resume executions.
A coalition of hundreds of current and former police officers, families of murder victims, business leaders, civil rights and criminal justice groups and religious organizations gathered Monday published letters to Biden He called on him to commute the sentences of death row inmates to life imprisonment.
“The Trump administration’s previous rush to execute federal prisoners during a global pandemic demonstrated that its actions were neither guided nor dictated by respect for justice, due process and the rule of law,” said a letter from 38 current and former district attorneys and attorneys general, and police chiefs said. “Their abandonment of these hallmarks of American jurisprudence – and their expressed interest in doing so again – requires a complete commutation of all federal death sentences. At this moment, we ask you to lead by example and choose justice, mercy and compassion for our nation.”
And on Sunday, Pope Francis prayed for similar measures.
“Today I feel compelled to ask all of you to pray for the inmates on death row in the United States,” Francis said said. “Let us pray that their sentences will be commuted or changed. Let us remember our brothers and sisters and ask the Lord for the grace to save them from death.”
Additionally, criminal justice groups like FAM are calling on Biden to commute the sentences of those serving sentences that Biden himself has acknowledged as excessive. As Reason has found that Biden's federal pardons of marijuana offenders only included convictions for possession, not sales, leaving thousands of prison sentences for marijuana trafficking intact.
More than 20 women sexually abused by FCI Dublin staff a notorious federal women's prison The court, which closed earlier this year, also has pending clemency requests from the White House.
“We all believe so passionately that if Biden can pardon his son, he can definitely grant clemency to the survivors of this heinous abuse at the hands of federal government employees,” said Kendra Drysdale, an attorney with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, who previously served in Dublin was imprisoned, told The Guardian last week. “Not doing so is an absolute disgrace and embarrassment.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
However, The Washington posT reported On Monday, the Biden White House “heard the arguments and discussed potentially taking steps to commute at least some federal death sentences,” according to several people familiar with the internal discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private matters and describe ongoing consultations in detail. “
