Acts of Mercy by Chris Byrd

Having been part of the abolitionist movement for more than 40 years, I can authoritatively state: President Biden’s historic December 23, 2024 decision to commute 37 federal death row prisoners’ sentences to life without parole is the most consequential victory we’ve ever achieved. 

To understand how historic and unprecedented Biden’s acts of mercy are, consider recent presidents’ capital punishment positions. President-elect Trump’s killing spree that took 13 federal death row prisoners’ lives in the final six months of his first term is well documented.

President Clinton signed 1994’s Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (also known as the crime bill), which expanded the number of crimes eligible for death by 60. On his last day in office (January 20, 2001), however, in one grace note for him, Clinton commuted David Ronald Chandler’s federal death sentence. President Barrack Obama also commuted Abelardo Arboleda Ortiz and Dwight Loving’s death sentences in January 2017.

This context makes plain why Biden’s actions are without parallel and momentous. And the president’s own history with criminal justice issues makes his actions all the more astonishing. 

Biden sponsored the crime bill, which many believe precipitated America’s distressing levels of mass incarceration. According to the Sentencing Project, the criminal, legal system currently supervises more than five million individuals. Black individuals, according to the Sentencing Project, are disproportionately represented in this population, comprising 26 percent of it, while comprising only 12 percent of the general population.

These disparities are also reflected in the federal death penalty’s application: 73 percent of people prosecuted in federal capital murder cases, between 1989 and 2024, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), were persons of color. And since federal executions resumed in 1988, also according to the DPIC, more than 40 percent of the individuals the government killed were Black.

When he issued these commutations, the president’s special relationship with the Black community must have been on his mind. He expressed his feeling for them, celebrating his election November 7, 2020: “The African-American community stood up again for me. You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours.”

What he owed the Black community and how the legislation he championed contributed to the disparities Blacks experience within the criminal justice system likely factored into the president’s decision.

Whatever his motivations, what Biden did should fill abolitionists with joy and gratitude. We certainly wish, however, he would extend the same mercy to the four people on military death row and the remaining three people on federal death row: Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue killer Robert Bowers, and Charleston Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) shooter Dylann Roof.  

Despite the moratorium US Attorney General Merrick Garland imposed on federal executions in July 2021, the justice department pursues these death sentences because hate animated these killers. Along with his deceased brother Tamerian, the jihadist terrorist Tsarnaev planted three bombs that killed three and injured 264 others at the fabled road race in April 2013.

Anti-Semitic rage compelled Bowers to kill 11 congregants at the Steel City house of worship in October 2018. Invited to worship with the Holy City’s historic AME church members, avowed white supremacist Roof killed nine worshippers and injured another in June 2015.

The belief the death penalty should be reserved for the worst of the worse animates the pursuit of capital punishment in these cases. These crimes were senseless, craven, and unconscionable. However, when he killed 23 people and injured 22 more at an El Paso grocery store in a racist assault in August 2019, then 20-year-old, white male Patrick Crusius’s murders were quantitatively worse than the aforementioned killings.

Yet, in 2023, Crusius received 90 consecutive life federal sentences in a justice department plea deal. HIs case reveals the worst of the worse argument’s fallacy and how arbitrarily death sentences are imposed. This salient fact underscores that arbitrariness: Fewer than 2 percent of US counties, according to the DPIC, account for more than half of the nation’s death row population.

Not as total as we hoped, the president’s commutations nonetheless have engendered new hope and momentum for our movement, which has already borne fruit. On New Year’s Eve, outgoing North Carolina Governor, Democrat Roy Cooper, commuted the sentences of 15 of the 136 individuals on the state’s death row. We hope more governors follow his example. 

The president’s commutations also endorse an approach the public favors. A 2019 Gallup Poll found 60 percent of Americans believe life without parole sentences are most appropriate for capital murder, compared to the 36 percent who believe capital punishment is most appropriate. 

To end state killing, our movement must capitalize upon and unite around the surprisingly popular yet winning message inherent in Biden’s acts of mercy: Our society can be safe and hold murderers accountable without sinking to the perpetrator’s level. ♦

Chris Byrd is the author of Sisters: The Extraordinary Lives of Serena and Anna Marie Branson.

Image: engin akyurt / Unsplash

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