Barack Hussein Obama supposedly once said of his former Vice President, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to (foul) things up.” Snopes calls the claim that President Obama actually said this “unproven,” but whether our 44^th President actually said this about the man who was about to become our 46^th President, Mr Biden has proven its accuracy.

Biden Commutes 37 Death Sentences Ahead of Trump’s Plan to Resume Federal Executions

Those affected by the president’s action on Monday are still subject to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Three men will remain on federal death row.

By Aishvarya Kavi | Monday, December 23, 2024 | 5:01 AM EST

President Biden on Monday commuted the sentences of nearly all prisoners on federal death row, sparing the lives of 37 men just a month before Donald J. Trump will return to the Oval Office with a promise to restart federal executions.

Also see: William Teach, “Brandon Commutes 37 Federal Death Row Sentences Because Trump“

Those affected by Mr. Biden’s action, all of whom were convicted of murder, will serve life imprisonment without the possibility of parole instead of facing execution. Only three men, who each carried out notorious mass killings, will remain on federal death row.

The president campaigned in 2020 on ending the federal death penalty. Although proposed legislation to that effect failed to advance in Congress during his administration, Mr. Biden directed the Justice Department to issue a moratorium on federal executions. Thirteen prisoners on federal death row were put to death during Mr. Trump’s first term.

“I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” Mr. Biden said in a statement on Monday. “In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”

Mr. Biden said the commutations were consistent with the standard he has imposed for halting executions “in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”

I will point out that I, too, am opposed to capital punishment. In my view, the state should not kill anyone other than in situations in which not using lethal force would result in the killer killing other people. And, if someone is already in custody, and is helpless enough that he cannot prevent his own execution, he is far too helpless to meet any imminent danger to other people.

But look at what Mr Biden said. “I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level” That pretty much rings hollow because he did not commute the death sentences of three men:

The three men who can still face federal execution are Robert D. Bowers, 52, who in 2018 gunned down 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh; Dylann Roof, 30, the white supremacist who in 2015 opened fire on Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, S.C., killing nine people; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 31, one of the two brothers who carried out the bombing of the Boston Marathon in 2013 that killed three and maimed more than a dozen others.

Messrs Bowers, Roof, and Tsarnaev are all in custody, and present no threat to anyone else. If the President is convinced that we must stop the use of capital punishment, why are these three men exceptions? Yes, their crimes were horrible, but were they really any worse than the killings committed by others? One of those whose sentence was commuted is Kaboni Savage, who was sen­tenced to death for his involve­ment in the killings of 12 peo­ple in con­nec­tion with a drug enterprise. He killed more people than any of the three men whose sentences were not commuted. But, of course, Mr Savage’s killings attracted less news coverage and less public outrage.

The New York Times article goes through several paragraphs telling us how opposed Mr Biden is to capital punishment, but all that I see is a man who is opposed to capital punishment as long as it’s not a politically difficult case.