Dec 23, 2024
Biden Commutes Sentences Of 37 Federal Death Row Inmates
President Joe Biden announced he is commuting the sentences of 37 inmates on federal death row.
- 9 minutes
After facing pressure
from religious organizations, civil rights
advocacy groups and even the pope,
Joe Biden has commuted the sentence of
nearly all inmates on federal death row.
And I say nearly all because there
were a few notable exceptions,
[00:00:16]
and we'll get into those momentarily.
But first, today I'm commuting
the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals
on federal death row to life sentences
without the possibility of parole.
These commutations are consistent with the
moratorium my administration has imposed
[00:00:34]
on federal executions in cases other than
terrorism and hate motivated mass murder.
Make no mistake, I condemn these murders.
Murderers grieve for the families
of their despicable acts and ache
for all the families who have suffered
unimaginable and irreparable loss.
[00:00:53]
Biden also added Trump returning to office
to the Or to office for his second term
was a motivating factor
in his decision, he says.
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
[00:01:12]
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.
Now, before Trump took office in 2016,
the last federal execution was in 2003.
[00:01:27]
The Trump administration
oversaw 13 executions.
Upon taking office in 2021,
the Biden administration issued
a moratorium on federal executions.
Anti-Death penalty activists
have been pressuring Biden to take action
and commute these sentences
before his time in office runs out.
[00:01:46]
Earlier this month,
Pope Francis even spoke out.
Today, I feel compelled to ask all of you
to pray for the inmates on death row
in the United States.
Let us pray that their sentences
may be commuted or changed.
Let us think of these brothers
and sisters of ours, and ask the Lord
[00:02:02]
for grace to save them from death.
But who didn't have
their sentences commuted?
The three men on death row
whose sentences are not being commuted
are Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whose conviction
related to his role in the Boston
Marathon bombing that killed three.
[00:02:19]
Dylann roof, who killed nine in the South
Carolina Emanuel African Methodist
Episcopal Church shooting.
And Robert Bowers,
who killed 11 in the Pittsburgh Tree
of Life synagogue shooting.
Now, while Biden's move was substantial
for the federal death row,
[00:02:37]
over 2000 people remain on death row
on state charges throughout the country.
Now, some people might see this
as controversial.
Some people might celebrate this.
Where do you
where do you fall on this issue?
So I used to be in favor
of the death penalty.
This is one of the few things that I've
changed my mind on over the years
[00:02:55]
that we've been doing The Young Turks
at a huge hour long debate
with Mario Cuomo about it and, and so on.
This I don't have a lot of compassion
for the people that are on death row.
And so that's not
why I have the position that I do.
[00:03:11]
The reason I switched my position
to being against the death penalty
is because the Innocence Project proved
that we were killing innocent people.
So it's one thing to say,
hey, let's kill guilty people.
And maybe I'm a bad guy
for saying that, right?
For.
But look,
I want justice for their families.
[00:03:28]
And all these guys did terrible,
terrible things.
Okay, but I don't want injustice
of killing an innocent person.
That's the worst possible thing
you could do.
And it's not a small number, guys.
Dozens of people were let go
off of death row because it turns out
[00:03:44]
we had the wrong people.
Okay, so that's why I would commute
all their sentences,
including the the three notorious killers.
So you Biden can't say,
hey, I'm a good Catholic.
The pope told me
to get rid of the death sentence.
But those other three guys
are super bad guys, so no or but that.
[00:04:01]
But the three.
The politics of those three
guys is not wait, are you doing it
because of your conscience?
Because the pope told you to?
Or are you not doing it
because the Pope is not unclear?
The Catholic Church is not unclear.
They don't ask, hey, what did they do?
So of course you know me.
Second of all, I don't give a damn.
I mean, Pope's a relatively good guy,
but I don't care what the Pope thinks.
[00:04:19]
Why do I care?
Why are we even having that discussion?
That has nothing to should have nothing to
do with the US government's policy on it.
So I would have commuted all their
sentences, even though I hate them all.
But unless one of them is innocent and
that's why I would commute the sentences
and remember, guys, they don't walk
if they were going to walk,
[00:04:36]
it's a whole different situation.
It's a life sentence.
None of them
are ever getting out of prison.
And so, I mean, I can't hate anybody
more than I hate Dylann Roof
other than maybe the synagogue shooter
and maybe the Boston Marathon bomber.
Right. So they're all despicable people.
That's not the question.
[00:04:51]
The question is,
do we have a death penalty?
Should we have a death penalty
or shouldn't we?
- And I don't think we should.
- Yeah.
No, I, I mean, I don't think
even for the most heinous cases.
So you're saying if they're,
they're convicted, they for sure did it.
- You're okay with it, but you're morally.
- I'm totally fine with it.
[00:05:08]
Sure.
But but as a as a policy, if you start
using death row, in some cases you'll
wind up using it in more cases
and then you'll wind up making mistakes.
- That's a guarantee.
- Right.
And then when it becomes a piece
of someone's political platform, right.
[00:05:23]
In Texas, you see governors
trying to one up the last one.
That's extremely worrying.
Now, I it is interesting
that he didn't commute these sentences.
It's not surprising that he didn't
commute the sentences of Dylann Roof,
Robert Bowers and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Also, because you're going to see Trump
or you would have seen Trump
[00:05:42]
try to rush through that list
similar to those 13 that he did,
were all around the last year of his term,
and they continued up
until the last week of his term.
So they were trying to go through that,
that list of inmates on death row
as fast as they could.
[00:05:57]
So when you have that kind of a dynamic in
a party and in a group of politicians,
that's worrying because,
like Jenks pointing out, some people could
be innocent, but you have an alternative.
They're still being punished
for what they did.
Life without parole is
the second worst punishment you can get.
[00:06:15]
I think that's perfectly fine.
And there's also something that weighs
on me when I think about this as a form of
punishment beyond the potential innocence,
just the barbarism and violence
and the cycle of violence
that it continues to perpetuate.
It just doesn't feel right for a group
of people in some, in sometimes
[00:06:34]
politically charged cases or sentences
to take someone's life as a result.
And it ethically, morally, for some
people, spiritually, at least for me,
it doesn't it doesn't sit well with me.
And I think that we have evolved as a
society, as a group of humans, that we can
[00:06:54]
find alternatives to the death penalty.
I think we have them. It's in front of us.
It's right there in front of you.
I wish we could get past it.
Unfortunately, there are 2000
plus more people
who are potentially awaiting their death.
Yeah.
[00:07:09]
As usual, Democrats. Slight improvement.
You know, throughout the years, Bill
Clinton went back home to execute someone
in the middle of his first presidential
run, and that person actually had
a significant mental impairment.
But as for the purpose of politics,
he wanted to show how tough he was.
[00:07:26]
So he went back home and executed that guy
who could barely understand
what was going on.
So now Biden is a little bit better
because he commuted
almost all the federal ones.
And so I guess that's a tiny bit of
progress, but a tiny bit of progress could
be the motto of the Democratic Party.
[00:07:43]
I mean, I don't want to undersell
this was significant.
I mean, this is all but three.
And those three, you look at them,
it's like, okay,
I get why he wouldn't do those three.
Politically.
Yeah.
I mean, 37 out of 40 on federal death row
for what he was able to do
on this specifically.
[00:07:59]
I think that's significant.
I don't want to undersell that.
This was, I think,
the right move for him to do.
I mean, I wish he would
have done it earlier.
But.
I didn't really matter
because they didn't die.
So, like, they would have been
in jail either way.
So now I'm giving him
a little bit of credit for that.
[00:08:14]
Sure, sure.
And there were other like again,
the it's heartbreaking.
On the innocence thing.
I worked on a case,
about a year ago in Texas, Ivan Cantu,
and he probably was innocent.
All the evidence was pointing
to him being innocent.
[00:08:30]
And he was charged in the 90s
and despite public outcry, the advocates
trying to reach through every
possible avenue to reach Governor Abbott,
he just didn't pay attention,
didn't care, didn't do anything,
and they executed him anyway.
[00:08:46]
Probably very likely an innocent man.
And there are so many stories like that.
Marcellus Williams recently,
probably innocent.
And it's just there's nothing you can do
because people see it, like you're saying,
Jake, as an opportunity to show their
toughness as a governor or as a leader.
[00:09:01]
And that's just I think it's inhumane.
Ironically, what's tough is commuting
the sentence of a death
penalty inmate knowing you're going
to get a lot of flack for it.
That's a much better show of strength than
executing a guy who's mentally impaired.
So I wish our politicians
had the strength of and the courage
[00:09:19]
to do the right thing when it's unpopular,
because that shows true strength.
But overall,
Biden largely did the right thing here.
Credit where credit is due.
Thanks for watching The Young Turks
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