Biden's Clemency for Federal Prisoners Is Only Part of the Story

on Dec 24, 2024

SAN DIEGO -- There are three things you need to know about the media and how they approach anything that is complicated.

First, as storytellers, we're drawn to the complicated.

Second, as journalists, we're paid to simplify the complicated.

Third, as mostly linear thinkers, we often struggle to break down and explain whatever is complicated.

Here's the simple explanation of how President Joe Biden marked Christmas week by showing mercy.

Biden used his clemency powers to pull 37 people off federal death row and instead commute their sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The 46th president -- who promised to end the federal death penalty while campaigning for president in 2020 but never did much to fulfill that promise during his four years in office -- framed his decision as a preemptive move against what could be a more heavy-handed approach by his successor, who also happens to be his predecessor.

"I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level," Biden said in a statement. "In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted."

Apparently, though, Biden's conscience only bothered him so much. He also left three murderers on federal death row: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Dylann Roof and Robert Bowers.

Tsarnaev was convicted of carrying out -- along with his brother -- the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 which killed three people and injured more than 260. He was also convicted of killing MIT police officer Sean Collier after the bombing.

Roof was convicted of killing nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.

And Bowers was convicted of killing 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.

Back in 2020, Biden's campaign website boasted that he would "work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government's example."

Meanwhile, the decision to spare more than three dozen federal inmates from the death penalty is actually part of a larger story.

A few weeks ago, in the largest single-day act of clemency in modern history, Biden commuted the sentences of roughly 1,500 individuals who were -- during the COVID-19 pandemic -- released from federal prison and placed on home confinement. He also pardoned 39 people who had been convicted of nonviolent federal crimes.

At the time, the president tried to sell the mass clemency to the American people by packaging it as a "second chance" for offenders.

"America was built on the promise of possibility and second chances," Biden said in a statement. "As president, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, restoring opportunity for Americans to participate in daily life and contribute to their communities, and taking steps to remove sentencing disparities for non-violent offenders, especially those convicted of drug offenses."

So there is the executive summary. A president uses the authority given to him by the Constitution to show mercy -- of one form or another -- to a large number of federal prisoners.

Many of the news articles that I read about Biden's clemency ended there. But there is a lot more to it.

How about the fact that many of the people that Biden removed from federal death row may have been put there as a result of the notorious 1994 crime bill that Biden authored with the help of police unions? That bill made about 60 crimes -- including terrorism, murder of law enforcement officers, major drug trafficking and drive-by shootings -- eligible for the death penalty at the federal level. So Biden lit a fire, and now he wants credit for putting it out?

Or how about the fact that President-elect Donald Trump, who Biden implied would be overly harsh on matters of criminal justice, has a record that says otherwise. With a nudge from CNN commentator Van Jones, Trump signed into law the First Step Act. That legislation changed sentencing for some drug convictions and expanded ways for federal inmates to knock time off their sentences. This is the same guy who Biden thinks is going to expedite federal executions?

The media needs to draw the entire picture. It's the right thing to do, and the honest way to ply our trade. And, as a bonus, telling the whole story usually makes for a better story.

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To find out more about Ruben Navarrette and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.