legrandangle-lgm

A wide range of advocacy groups and religious groups — including the Vatican — are urging President Joe Biden to commute the sentences of several groups of federal prisoners before he leaves office, such as death row inmates, marijuana offenders and women who have been sexually abused in prison. federal prisons.

Biden issued a broad pardon to his son Hunter last week, prompting clemency experts and civil liberties groups to ask the obvious question.

“What about everyone else?” said 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 targeted by zealous prosecutors. There is still time for Biden to limit the damage this will cause to his legacy, but he will have to make a significant effort.”

Although Biden has previously announced categorical pardons for low-level federal marijuana offenders, his administration still often disappointed criminal justice advocates who hoped for more based on his 2020 campaign platform. After years of inaction from Biden, the pardon fell his son even more.

“While I can understand a father wanting to save his son from injustice, we expect a president to have that perspective for everyone’s children,” said Rachel Barkow, a professor at NYU School of Law. “It’s the singling out of just his child and his abysmal record for everyone else (at least so far) that is so shocking. Where is the compassion and mercy for all the other people who are serving excessive sentences or have been wrongly prosecuted or convicted? hard?”

As Barkow and Osler noted in a New York Times op-ed they wrote together in september, biden adopted the lowest pardon percentage of any modern American president since Richard Nixon.

Whether Biden improves his record is not a statistical question for the forty inmates on federal death row, but a matter of life and death. Before Donald Trump left the Oval Office in 2021, his administration began an execution period of six monthsin which 13 prisoners died.

Biden campaigned in 2020 on ending the federal death penalty, but once in power that promise was quickly forgotten. Although the Justice Department imposed a moratorium on executions, it continued to seek the death penalty in two mass murder cases. It would be an act of cowardice or hypocrisy if Biden were to let all those death sentences stand, knowing that the new Trump administration will resume executions.

On Monday, a coalition of hundreds of current and former law enforcement officers, families of homicide victims, business leaders, civil liberties and criminal justice groups, and religious organizations letters to Biden released He urged him to commute the sentences of death row inmates to life in prison.

“The Trump Administration’s previous rush to execute federal prisoners during a global pandemic has shown that respect for justice, due process, and the rule of law did not guide or dictate their actions,” reads a letter from 38 current and former officers of the justice. ‘, say police chiefs. “Their abolition of these hallmarks of American jurisprudence – and their stated interest in doing so again – requires a complete commutation of all federal death sentences. At this time, we ask you to lead by example and choose justice, mercy and compassion for our nation. .”

And on Sunday, Pope Francis prayed for similar action.

“Today I feel compelled to ask all of you to pray for the prisoners on death row in the United States,” Francis said. said. “Let us pray that their sentences may be commuted or modified. Let us remember these brothers and sisters of ours and ask the Lord for the grace to save them from death.”

In addition, criminal justice groups such as FAMM are calling on Biden to commute the sentences of those serving sentences that Biden himself has acknowledged are excessive. If Rode has notedBiden’s pardons for federal marijuana offenders included only convictions for possession, not sale, leaving intact thousands of prison sentences for marijuana trafficking.

More than twenty women were sexually assaulted by FCI Dublin staff a notorious federal women’s prison which was closed earlier this year, have also submitted clemency requests to the White House.

“We all feel so passionately that if Biden can pardon his son, he can certainly grant clemency to the survivors of this horrific abuse at the hands of federal government employees,” said Kendra Drysdale, an advocate with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners who previously imprisoned in Dublin. , told The Guardian last week. “To not do that is an absolute disgrace and shame.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

However, The Washington PosT reported On Monday, the Biden White House “listened to arguments and discussed possible steps to commute at least some federal death sentences,” according to multiple people familiar with the internal conversations who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private and ongoing describe deliberations in detail. “