Summary
President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 federal death row inmates to life without parole, sparing all but three convicted of high-profile mass killings.
Biden framed the decision as a moral stance against federal executions, citing his legal background and belief in the dignity of human life.
Donald Trump criticized the move as senseless, vowing to reinstate the death penalty.
Reactions were mixed: some victims’ families condemned Biden, while others supported his decision. Human rights groups praised it as a significant step against capital punishment.
Even the most die-hard anti-death-penalty believer has their limits. It may take Hitler-level atrocities to get there, or maybe even worse. But everyone has their own line in the sand where even they will say “If there was ever a case in favor of the death penalty, this is that case.” That line is in a completely different place for everybody.
Since the President has final pardon power, he actually does get to decide who gets to live. It’s a power granted to him by the Constitution.
Yep I’m anti-death penalty, the 3 that didn’t get pardoned should probably just live the rest of their lives in prison. But I’m not going to shed any tears for them.
He didn’t pardon the others, he commuted their sentences to life in prison. Of note, the 3 civilians left are terrorists who committed mass murder and were caught red handed. There are also 4 people on military death row who remain. One is also a mass murdering terrorist; one committed literal treason, attacking his own unit in the middle of the night overseas; one is a serial killer/rapist; and one took three trials over 4 decades to convict of a group murder.
They should probably commute his sentence too…
I understand that and, if you ask me, those 3 guys are pos. My problem is that he said he did it to take a moral stance against death penalty. You can’t do that and go “except for these 3 cases”.
Right, but again…everybody has that point where they say “…except that case”. You and Biden just disagree on where that line is. Even the Pope is eventually going to look at someone who committed some heinous crimes and say “Dude, even the Bible says that shit ain’t cool…”
I’m not sure that’s true. Some people legitimately stop at life in prison and always oppose the death penalty.
I’m confident. Granted, for some people that red line may require atrocities at or above Hitler levels. It may require atrocities that are comically unrealistic. But it’s there. Put up someone who killed a proverbial busload of school children. If that isn’t enough, two. “Yeah, I killed them all, and I raped them first, and I’ll do the same again if I ever escape.”. Someone’s gonna say “Yeah, OK, stick the needle in his arm”, just because they don’t want to take the .000001% chance that he actually does escape.
An extreme example, yes, but I’m sure you get the idea. Everybody’s got a breaking point.
Again, I don’t know if that’s true. People seem to have very strange absolute moral ideas sometimes.
But not everybody is making a statement about morality. He’s purportedly saying “capital punishment is bad and we should get rid of it”. If you make exceptions, all you’re saying is that you’re in favor of keeping it around for really bad people, which is exactly where they are now.
People make exceptions for things they believe in all the time. Religion is a prime example; show me any established religion, and I’ll show you a few dozen beliefs associated with that religion that 99.9% of worshippers conveniently ignore. That doesn’t mean they don’t believe. That just means they have limits.
Nope. The most die hard, anti death penalty believer has no limits and literally says “we do not have the right to take anyone’s life, even if they are Hitler. In fact it would be better for society if we got to try to rehabilitate Hitler”.
And I agree with them.
I’d love a source for this. Personally, I don’t think we should be in the business of killing defenseless people in any context.
Why do you need a source for a fundamental part of human nature? subjectivity
Google/Bing/DDG/Kagi the word…
That means the opposite of what you’re arguing for though
What if they raped a baby to death right in front of you?