Outgoing presidents in recent decades have abused their power to pardon crimes or commute sentences, but Joe Biden is taking the abuse to a new level.
Presidential pardons and commutations can be good policy if judiciously awarded to deserving recipients. However, Biden is handing out blanket pardons for entire classes of crimes. Not only does this practice significantly violate the intent of pardon power, but in practice, it means that wholly undeserving convicts, some of whom committed crimes that shouldn’t be forgiven, will have their records unjustly cleansed.
On Dec. 12, Biden pardoned 39 people, all of whom, according to reports, were nonviolent offenders who had reintegrated admirably into their communities. At first glance, most of those pardons seem reasonable.
The big problem is with his 1,499 simultaneous sentence commutations, including a large number of people who have been serving home detention under a COVID-19 relief law that sent inmates away from prisons where the virus could easily spread into presumably safer home confinement. This follows two separate rounds of pardons, earlier in his administration, intended for thousands (each round) of low-level marijuana offenses. (Actually, only 257 of the intended beneficiaries actually followed through to secure their pardons.)
The marijuana pardons already had sent a misguided signal that mass disrespect for the law is all right, but this new mass commutation is even worse. In an aptly headlined piece, columnist Jim Geraghty invites readers to “Meet the Monsters Released by Joe Biden.” The one attracting the most criticism, deservedly so, is the judge who “took bribes to send children to for-profit juvenile prisons with sentences disproportionate to their crimes, and one of the children killed himself.” How in tarnation can that man merit a pardon?
Then there is the county commissioner from Ohio who “made about $450,000 off of bribes, including trips to Las Vegas, prostitutes, and in infamous outdoor stone-fired pizza oven installed in the backyard” of his home. But that perfidy pales compared to that of the Dixon, Illinois, official who embezzled a stunning $53.7 million, the largest municipal theft in American history. That is matched by the commutation for the perpetrator of the “biggest financial fraud case ever tried in Chicago,” that of the investment manager who “bilked investors out of more than $665 million.” And the fraudster in Nevada who victimized literally thousands of homeowners, “Many of them frail, elderly, and now destitute.”
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Geraghty’s list goes on, but you get the picture. These aren’t people who committed victimless crimes or ones whose sentences were disproportionate to the offense. These aren’t people who particularly distinguished themselves with unusually good deeds after serving time and who just need their records cleansed so they can regain their right to vote and their ability to get jobs and bank loans. These people received sentences commensurate with the major crimes but were already getting a break from prison because of a pandemic that is no longer existent. Now Biden is giving them, for no good reason, the added benefit of full release.
Biden’s mass commutations are shameful. If they look like they are being issued by a man who has completely lost his ability to distinguish between right and wrong, then sometimes looks are not deceiving.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
