Pres. Biden commutes most federal death sentences

A report on today's announcement is here.  Here's a bit:

“Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole,” Biden announced in a statement released Monday.

Notably, the president did not commute the sentences of three people whose crimes included mass shootings or acts of terrorism: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of two brothers responsible for the deadly Boston Marathon bombing in 2013; Dylann Roof, a White nationalist who massacred nine people at a historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.

“These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,” Biden said, referring to his Justice Department’s halt on federal executions.

I would welcome legislation (federal and / or state) that abandoned capital punishment as a sanction. At the same time, I do not believe that capital punishment violates the Constitution (and so judges should not use creative interpretations to bring about abolition) and I also think it is not consistent with the role of the "executive" to, in a blanket way, effectively nullify legislative and electoral choices. It would have been, in my view, better had Pres. Biden, when he was Vice President Biden, used his influence, and large congressional majorities, and political capital, to work for a legislative repeal.

It also seems to me that the reasons the President gives for commuting most of the federal death sentences apply with equal force to the "high profile" ones he is letting stand. If anything, his decision not to commute in the cases where it would be politically controversial to do so is inconsistent with his (correct) concern that political considerations distort the application of capital punishment.

I hope, though, that this news prompts legislative actions in the states, such as this one in my own state of Indiana.