The Biden administration issued a rather stunning announcement Monday morning. President Joe Biden has issued an order commuting the sentences of 37 of 40 federal death row inmates. Making matters worse, the exception as to three of the inmates seems to drive a gaping hole through the logic of Biden’s claim that stopping the use of the federal death penalty is a matter of conscience.
As many have since noted, not only does the exception undermine Biden’s purported rationale and make the decision seem politically calculated, it also completely disregards the victims of the 37 whose sentences were commuted along with their families and loved ones — as if their tragedy and pain is somehow less deserving of justice than the victims of Robert Bowers, Dylan Roof, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.