Someone acting for the president just made a decision that only a president can make and commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 murderers on federal death row out of a sense of someone's moral imperative.
The Office of the President of the United States of America announced the commutations early Monday morning of Christmas week. A statement issued by the White House said the president was "guided by my conscience" to commute the death penalties for some of the worst of the worst offenders in America.
It begs the question of how consciously Joe Biden does anything these days after the Wall Street Journal last week detailed how the White House staff covered up the elected president's mental deficiencies as the pall of dementia continued to overcome his cognition. Staff acted as the president.
The White House statement claimed that the president said he was "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."
How much "good conscience" he possesses and the extent to which he ever had any moral conscience on the issue of life in the first place is also in question. In the past, Biden has talked about the morality of the death penalty — taking the life of an adult who chose to take someone else — but continues to support abortion — the taking of an innocent life.
Three people, whose commutations would have been too politically thorny were left on death row. A statement claimed this was done in Joe's — or somebody's — good conscience. They were people who committed mass shootings in places of worship and the Boston bomber.
Apparently, Joe or his proxy's conscience ends where it begins to hurt Democrats' electoral chances.
Related: Joe's Last Grift
"These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder," the statement read.
Dzokhar Tsarnaev, the Islamic terrorist who carried out the Boston Marathon bombing, did not have his sentence commuted because of the political fallout it would cause. Dylann Roof, the killer who looked for a soft target and settled on a Charleston, S.C., church, where he murdered nine black members in 2015 was left on death row. Robert Bowers, who killed eleven worshipers and grievously wounded others at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018 was also left on death row.
The other 37 worst of the worst were allowed to live the rest of their lives in prison, by presidential decree, though it's unclear whose decision it was. The statement attributed to Biden said, "Make no mistake: 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."
The killers given their lives back include, "Len Davis, a former New Orleans police officer who masterminded a drug protection ring involving several other officers and arranged the murder of a woman who filed a brutality complaint against him," the Guardian reported.
The list includes people who killed cops and military personnel on federal property, including those who killed guards or other inmates in federal prisons.
One particularly notorious murderer, Kaboni Savage, was responsible for killing 12 people in a drug operation. Others who had their sentences commuted had been part of murder-for-hire schemes on a U.S. Navy base and kidnappers and murderers of children. One person, Ronald Mikos, killed a federal grand jury witness who told the feds about his Medicare fraud.
The New York Times reported that two of the death row inmates whose lives were spared, Brandon Leon Basham and Chadrick Fulks, were there for previously breaking out of prison and murdering a woman in South Carolina in 2004.
Last week, someone at the White House also pardoned more than 1,500 people — "the most ever in a single day" by a president.
The Bidens will visit Italy at taxpayer expense in January, days before he leaves office. He'll visit the Pope, who will no doubt give him a pat on the back for these commutations and pardons.
Freeing the prisoners is a big decision. Sparing someone's life is an even bigger one. It's not clear if the one making those life-and-death calls was Joe Biden.
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