The killers' best friend

Joe Biden aims to deliver one last blow to any serious concept either of earned punishment, the rule of law, or restraint in the use of executive power. Intended beneficiaries: murderers.

A couple of days ago I saw this story in the WSJ. It starts:

President Biden is considering commuting the sentences of most, if not all, of the 40 men on the federal government’s death row, people familiar with the matter said, a move that would frustrate President-elect Donald Trump’s ability to resume the rapid pace of executions that marked his first term.

The putative “frustration” of Donald Trump strikes me as an odd choice to feature in the first paragraph of a story about the present Administration’s proposed unprecedented and startling use of federal clemency. It would be unfortunate if the Wall Street Journal, of all outlets, has caught the “everything’s about Trump” bug, but here we are.

As you might expect, the story goes downhill from there:

A broad coalition of religious and civil-rights groups has been pressing Biden to take the step, and the effort gained momentum earlier this month after Pope Francis, in his weekly address, prayed for the commutation of America’s condemned inmates. If their death sentences were commuted, the prisoners, all convicted of murder, would serve life without parole.

Translation: A bunch of killers will spend decades filing habeas petitions arguing that they should be released outright because, among other things, LWOP — to which, they will correctly note, no court ever sentenced them — is just a slow, hopeless death in a thin disguise.

Your money will get spent answering these habeas suits.

Biden, a devout Catholic, spoke with Francis on Thursday and is scheduled to meet with him at the Vatican next month, the White House said.

A devout Catholic, that is, except when it comes to cheerleading for unlimited abortion. Still, let’s not be overly harsh here. Having a chipper meeting with the Pope is what our separation-of-church-and-state (so liberals say when convenient) government should be about.

A decision from the president could come by Christmas, some of the people said. A principal question is whether the president should issue a blanket commutation of all the condemned men, or whether death sentences should remain for the most heinous convicts, these people said.

Yes, that is a problem, isn’t it? No one is claiming these guys are innocent or that they haven't had a full crack at the legal system, usually over years if not decades. The only argument Joe has is that the death penalty is fundamentally wrong at its base, uncivilized and inhumane. But that logic obligates him to commute everyone, including, among others, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (see my post here partly describing Tsarnaev’s murder of an eight year-old) and Dylann Roof. If he commutes them too, it will tarnish his "legacy" even more thoroughly than the undisguised abuse of his office in pardoning little Hunter. And it will be a clear case of putting his personal preferences above long-accepted norms that had previously governed federal clemency. (Even Carter and Obama never to my knowledge considered a step this radical).

Accordingly, similarly-based criticisms of the norm-shattering Donald Trump, which we continue to hear at ten zillion decibels weeks after he clobbered Kamala, can kiss goodbye to any claim of legitimacy. Not that they had much to start with beyond Ryan Routh and his suddenly slightly quieter allies. And not that Biden cares about such claims anyway, since one way or the other he’ll soon be past caring.

In a pending case, the Justice Department is seeking the death penalty for Payton Gendron, who is awaiting a trial in federal court for the 2022 mass shooting at the Tops supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y. Gendron already is serving a life term after pleading guilty to state murder charges, the most severe sentence under state law because New York has no death penalty.

Those who could see their death sentences commuted to life in prison include an ex-Marine who killed two young girls and later a female naval officer; a Las Vegas man convicted of kidnapping and killing a 12-year-old girl; a Chicago podiatrist who fatally shot a patient to keep her from testifying in a Medicare fraud investigation; and two men convicted in a kidnapping-for-ransom scheme that resulted in the killings of five Russian and Georgian immigrants.

I try to go beyond the obvious in my writing, because readers deserve more than what they plainly can see for themselves. But sometimes the obvious demands to be written down:

The major problem with Biden’s apparently imminent action is not that it’s norm-breaking. The problem is not that it renders incoherent his Justice Department’s present litigation posture. The problem is not that, if a President dislikes the federal death penalty, the obvious thing to do is ask Congress to repeal it — respect for democratic processes, dontcha know. The problem is not that the President’s proposed plan is deceptive and cowardly, coming now only after the election and never mentioned before.

No, that’s not the problem. The problem is that it’s morally repulsive. For more than 50 years, a majority of the American people have supported capital punishment over exactly the arguments Biden will make. Congress reinstated it in federal law more than 40 years ago. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld it starting in Gregg v. Georgia in the 1970’s. Biden himself bragged about supporting it when he sponsored the 1994 Crime Bill. The reason for this overwhelming support isn’t that hard to figure out: For some grotesque murders, nothing else comes close to a punishment that fits the crime. And, arguably just as important, it’s a statement that we have sufficient moral confidence that, in the most extreme instances, we have the right to say “no” and make it stick.

If Biden had any judgment or honor left, he would have resigned months or maybe years ago. In light of his apparent plan in his dotage to give one last kick in the gut to justice, impeachment now, though obviously futile in the practical sense, is one more thing Congress should add to his “legacy.”