The decision of President Joe Biden to clear the federal death row has caused an uproar in some quarters and praise in others. There are good-faith arguments on both sides. However, there was a curious element to the Biden pardons for 37 people on death row. There were 40 people on death row. Three remain.
In making the announcement, President Biden declared that he had sympathy for the families of the victims:
“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.”
It was an odd statement because, for most of his career, Biden was an advocate of capital punishment. Indeed, in 1991, when Biden was still positioning himself for a run for the presidency, he condemned President George HW Bush’s Justice Department for being soft on crime and not sending enough people to death row: “He’s only four times a year put someone in prison for life and only once gotten the death penalty.”
Previously, Biden showed the same fervor in demanding the death penalty. In 1992, he bragged that his sponsored crime bill included new death penalty offenses and did “everything but hang people for jaywalking.”
Of course, Biden can claim that he has finally seen the light at the very end of his political career. Yet, his sweeping declaration does not match up with the scope of his commutations.
It will not stop the death penalty or prevent the executions on death row. Three remained: Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and Robert Bowers.
It was vintage Biden: a sweeping claim of principles that ignores the exceptions. He is opposed to the death penalty and wants to stop it entirely, except for three of the most unpopular people scheduled for execution.
For the families, the distinction is a precious one. It includes
•Brandon Council who murdered two in a bank robbery.
• Edward Leon Fields, Jr. who stalked and killed an older couple camping in the Winding Stair Mountains in Oklahoma like game.
• Len Davis, a former New Orleans police officer, who killed a woman who filed a civil rights complaint against him. Davis was known as the “Desire Terrorist” who led a criminal gang that protected criminals and locked up innocent people.
• Brandon Basham and Chadrick Fulks who were sentenced to death after escaping from prison and kidnapping and killing 44-year-old Alice Donovan and 19-year-old Samantha Burns. Donovan was raped and Burns was never found.
• Marvin Charles Gabrion II who sexually assaulted and murdered Rachel Timmerman before the nineteen-year-old was scheduled to testify against him. She disappeared with her eleven-month-old baby, Shannon, who was also presumably murdered by Gabrion who threw Timmerman’s body into a lake.
• Daniel Troya and Ricardo Sanchez Jr. who killed a family of four, including two children aged four and three in West Palm Beach, Florida, in 2006.
The point is not that Biden’s current stance against the death penalty is manifestly wrong. Rather, these cases are also considered horrific. The question is the principled line of separation for Biden who stated a desire to end all executions but then exempted some death row inmates from his sweeping commutations.
It is classic Biden. Sweeping in its claim, but conflicted and qualified in its application. He wants to end executions except for a select few without explaining the principled basis for the distinction. Even in the final days of his presidency and political career, principle still seems awkward and incomplete for Biden.