Regular readers of The First Street Journal, both of them, know that I am opposed to capital punishment. It isn’t because I am Catholic, although being Catholic informs my decision taking, but the belief that once we have a prisoner in a position where he can be executed without his consent, he is, by definition helpless, and it is not necessary to kill someone you hold helpless.

There has been a lot of talk recently about President Joe Biden, who purports to be Catholic, and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops discussing whether he should be denied the Eucharist due to his support of abortion. He is, however, very much in line with the Church in his opposition to capital punishment, but there are obvious questions raised by this story from The Washington Post:

Federal executions halted as Justice Dept. reviews Trump-era policies

By Devlin Barrett and Amy B Wang | July 1, 2021 | 8:50 PM EDT

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday issued a moratorium on federal executions, ordering a review of death penalty policy changes made during the Trump administration.

The move is an abrupt shift for the department, which just weeks ago filed court papers seeking to reinstate the death penalty against Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

The Justice Department “must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, but is also treated fairly and humanely,” Garland said in a written statement. “That obligation has special force in capital cases.”

President Biden is the first sitting president to oppose capital punishment, although he was also part of the Obama administration, which sought the death penalty in the Tsarnaev case. But Biden’s public statements about the death penalty strongly suggested there would be such a moratorium in his administration — in stark contrast to the Trump administration, which aggressively restarted executions.

There’s more at the original. But, from a previous Post story:

Biden opposes the death penalty, and his campaign has said he will work to pass legislation to eliminate capital punishment at the federal level. Under former president Barack Obama, there was a moratorium on executions while the Justice Department reviewed its protocols, even as it continued to seek and win death sentences in some trials.

Why get so complicated? The President of the United States has unlimited pardoning power as far as federal prisoners are concerned. President Biden can have a moratorium on executions, but, when the next president takes office again, executions could be reinstated. President Biden could, if he so chose, commute every federal capital sentence^[1]President Obama commuted the odious Bradley Manning’s 35 year prison sentence, but did so in a way in which Mr Manning would not be released until May of 2017, four months into President … Continue reading — he has no authority over sentences by state courts — to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and order the Department of Justice and all United States Attorneys not to seek capital sentences during his term. There are currently 46 federal prisoners under federal death sentences; President Biden could wipe every one of those off the board with just his signature.

Why should we be wasting money on both seeking to execute and defending Dylann Roof from an execution that will almost certainly never happen anyway? Why are we wasting money trying to reinstate the capital sentence against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, when we know that, under President Biden, he will not be executed anyway?

If President Biden is opposed to capital punishment, then he might as well take action to end federal capital sentences, and at least save us a few bucks in the process.