The Patriot Post® · Commuter Joe Strikes Again
Just before Christmas, Joe Biden commuted death sentences for 37 of the most evil people among us. Yet he has no problem taking the lives of the most innocent, roughly a million of whom are sacrificed on the altar of “women’s rights” every year.
Biden argues that he’s a “good Catholic,” and his moral objection to the death penalty certainly fits that description. The Catholic Church opposes capital punishment. Again, however, his moral compass does not point toward protecting the lives of the unborn, which the Catholic Church also teaches are sacred and worth saving. That contrast tells us Biden has his priorities backward.
“Make no mistake,” Biden said in a statement announcing the commutations, “I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss.”
“But…”
You knew the “but” was coming. “But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.”
Early in his administration, Biden issued a moratorium on all federal executions except for those due to “terrorism or hate-motivated mass murder.” Now, he has prevented Donald Trump from resuming them — at least for these 37 individuals, who will spend life in prison without parole. For the record, Trump’s Justice Department oversaw 13 executions in his first term, and he has called even for expanding the federal death penalty to include illegal aliens who murder American citizens.
Biden and the Democrats, on the other hand, have become infamous for being soft on crime. They either don’t enforce the nation’s laws or do so with a weak hand.
In fact, a White House fact sheet boasts, “This historic clemency action builds on the President’s record of criminal justice reform. The President has issued more commutations at this point in his presidency than any of his recent predecessors at the same point in their first terms.” Biden has shown record favoritism to criminals.
Indeed, he has issued a record list of 65 pardons and 1,634 clemencies, including a disgraceful pardon of his son and some other awful people. He has now extended his mercy to some really sick men with a lot of blood on their hands.
So, who are the beneficiaries of Biden’s commutations?
I’ll start with the three men for whom Biden did not commute sentences. The Wall Street Journal reports, “Biden left death sentences in place for three inmates found guilty of terrorism or hate-motivated mass killings: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who with his now-dead brother bombed the 2013 Boston Marathon, killing three and wounding more than 250 others; Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people in the 2018 attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh; and Dylann Roof, who in 2015 killed nine at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.”
Additionally, the military’s death row consists of four inmates at Fort Leavenworth, and then there are Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other 9/11 conspirators, whose punishment may (and should) include the death penalty.
As for the 37 murderers, Fox News lists some of them:
Marcivicci Barnette, who killed a man in a carjacking and his ex-girlfriend; co-defendants Brandon Basham and Chadrick Fulks, who kidnapped and killed a woman after escaping prison; Anthony Battle, who killed a prison guard; Jason Brown, who stabbed a postal worker to death; Thomas Hager, who committed a drug-related killing; David Runyon, who participated in the murder-for-hire plot of a Naval officer; Thomas Sanders, who kidnapped and killed a 12-year-old girl; Rejon Taylor, who carjacked, kidnapped and killed a restaurant owner; and Alejandro Umana, who killed two brothers inside a restaurant.
Sanders, by the way, killed the 12-year-old girl’s mother in front of her days before he shot her four times and slit her throat.
The others include people who committed murder while robbing banks, during disputes over drugs, or in an effort to silence witnesses to other crimes. Several killed other federal inmates. One man was serving a sentence for raping and murdering his wife, a U.S. Marine, after which he killed a prison guard with a hammer. Fox adds, “Drug lord Kaboni Savage murdered or directed someone else to murder 12 people during a 16-year period — including an arson that killed six members of a federal informant’s family.”
The New York Post reports, “Jorge Avila-Torrez sexually assaulted and stabbed to death two girls — Laura Hobbs, 8, and Krystal Tobias, 9 — who had been riding their bicycles in their neighborhood in a suburb north of Chicago in 2005. Four years later, he strangled naval officer Amanda Snell, 20, inside her barrack in Arlington, Va.”
The details of virtually all of these murders would make your stomach turn.
Joe Biden saved these killers, overruling the will of juries and appeals courts that knew the cases far better than whatever ideologues managed to get this list on his desk. He gave a Christmas slap in the face to the families and loved ones of the victims.
Some good people object to the death penalty for good reasons. The taking of a human life is beyond the pale for some, and, they argue, it clearly doesn’t serve as much of a deterrent for anyone contemplating murder. Moreover, given the number of cases that have been overturned by DNA evidence, there is a risk of executing the wrong person.
I don’t share those reservations. Capital punishment exists for two reasons. One is a deterrent, though the seemingly endless delays in the justice system have watered it down to become almost meaningless. The death penalty 20 or 30 years after the crime isn’t nearly as meaningful.
The other reason is more important, in any case. Some crimes are so heinous and some perpetrators are so evil that they should be removed from the planet. Capital punishment is the justice some criminals and their victims deserve.