Joe Biden's justifiable mercy

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/joe-biden-death-penalty-commutation-trump-mercy-rcna185220

President Joe Biden has officially commuted 37 of the 40 federal death sentences — all except for those of Robert Bowers (the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue killer), Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (the Boston Marathon bomber) and Dylann Roof (the Charleston, South Carolina, church shooter). Those receiving commutations will remain in prison, probably for life, but the federal government will be unable to execute them. The bulk commutation is a core presidential power, it sits comfortably within the tradition of Anglo-American clemency practice, and it’s politically shrewd. It’s also the right thing to do, especially following the controversial pardon of Hunter Biden.

The justification for the bulk commutation begins with what would have happened had Biden done nothing. President-elect Donald Trump has long wrapped his public appeal in cartoonish capital punishment rhetoric — from full-page ads urging death for the “Central Park Five” to campaign promises to kill drug dealers. Once in office, Trump pressed the envelope further. The Bureau of Prisons executed 13 people during the last six months of his first administration, which matched the number from the prior 70 years. In fact, before Daniel Lewis Lee succumbed to a lethal dose of pentobarbital in the summer of 2020, the federal government had not executed anybody in 17 years. It’s not just that prior administrations couldn’t convert death sentences into executions; they also didn’t seem to want to.

Trump and his Justice Department were different. Attorney General William Barr framed the first five scheduled executions as a solemn duty to victims, but, according to sworn testimony from the associate deputy attorney general, the department did not make “a specific effort to reach out to the victims’ families of the 5 that were selected.” And in Daniel Lewis Lee’s case, officials refused to amend the lethal injection calendar to allow the victim's family to attend the execution. Those family members both opposed Lee’s execution and were worried about traveling during the Covid pandemic.

I’ve previously argued that federal executions operate like vice signals that shape and cohere MAGA, forcing a contrast with (what is depicted as) the left’s virtue-signaled ambivalence and moral equivocation. I’ve described the Trumpist framing as one in which “righteous state killings represent strength and resolve, a clear line separating good and evil, and belief in free will over structural disadvantage.” For Trump, federal executions are a grim exercise in political branding; and they are handpicked political fights that he wins.

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