Biden's Death Penalty Commutations

Now I've discussed this on the show. I discussed the fact that the American Catholic bishops were asking Biden to commute the sentences of everyone on death row, and that Pope Francis had even reached out Tosident Biden to commute the sentences of everyone on death row. The basic Catholic position on the death penalty, if I can give a fair overall summary, looking at the John Paul to Francis sort of perspective as a whole, is basically one of negativity.

I think it's hard to sustain within Catholic teaching the idea that the death penalty is inherently wrong. But the John Paul, the second perspective which I don't want to

denigrate at all. The John Paul perspective, and his perspective, let's remember, was coming from communist dominated Poland, where people were executed in large numbers for ideological reasons, and so from John Paul the second perspective, I don't know that he saw too many, you know, just applications of the death penalty during his lifetime Poland that was conquered first

by the Nazis than by the Soviets. But John Paul the Second's formulation of Catholic teaching was that the death penalty would only be legitimate in very limited circumstances, and from JP two's perspective, with the developments in modern systems of incarceration, it was largely unnecessary worldwide, and that it would be a legitimate thing for Catholics to advocate for its abolition. That was the perspective of John Paul the

Second Benedict the sixteenth. I think Francis has been a bit more urgent in his and frankly, this has been a difficulty with Francis's papacy is that he has been less precise with his moral terminology than JP two was. So that's the Catholic perspective. It's the perspective that Joe Biden has been met with. I think the anyway, that's the perspective, and I'm not going to disagree with it

or denigrate it. The thing that I was I have been critical of Biden throughout his presidency that he had for years stated that he was opposed to the death penalty. Biden for years was opposed to the death penalty, as were many, many, many Democrats, not all, but many. It was liberal appointees to the Supreme Court who for a time actually ruled that the death penalty was violet of the Constitution itself, that the eighth Amendment of the Constitution

that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment actually prohibits the death penalty. Now, that idea was reversed in the nineteen seventies, but it's a longstanding thing among liberal criminal justice type that the death penalty is inherently wrong and should be abolished. And Biden carried that position for years and campaigned on that position in twenty twenty that he would abolish the federal

death penalty. Now, as president, you can't abolish the death penalty for state governments, Okay, if you commit murder and are prosecuted by a California state prosecutor or a Texas state well, let's do this better. If you commit murder in Texas and you're prosecuted by a Texas state prosecutor, odds are death penalty is very much on the table, and Joe Biden has nothing he can do to stop that. Joe Biden is a federal official. You've been prosecuted by

state prosecutors in Texas. However, there are a number of people who are prosecuted for capital crimes by federal prosecutors. So there are about forty one people who are on federal death row. Who secuted by federal prosecutors for crimes doesn't necessarily mean that their crimes were worse than other peoples. It was just that the offenses they had committed the way they had committed them involved some kind of interstate conduct or some other violation of federal law such that

federal prosecutors handled the prosecution rather than state prosecutors. So Joe Biden had said when he was running for president twenty twenty that he wanted to abolish the death penalty, and of course, as president, he is uniquely positioned to do something about it because he has the pardon and commutation powers. As president, he can pardon every person for

any kind of federal crime. As part of the pardon power, the president can also just commute a sense, a president can completely make your criminal conviction go away, or what he can do short of obviously, if he can get rid of absolutely everything, he can get rid of something, okay.

So this is sort of a logical extension of the sort of logically follows from the pardon power that if you're able to completely expunge someone's criminal conviction and criminal punishment, then you can expunge a portion of it as well. So the president has the power to commute a person's sentence. He can say, all right, you've been sentenced to death. Instead, I will commute your sentence to life imprisonment without possibility

of parole. Okay, you've been sentenced to forty years in prison, and I can commute your sentence to time served or to five years in prison, you know whatever. So the president has power. And one of the points I've been making about Biden's Catholicism as it relates to the death penalty is Biden has campaigned that he was opposed to

the death penalty. And that's the one thing that Catholic liberals sort of like to beat their chests about and say that, see, we follow the Church on the death penalty. You ignore the Church on the death penalty. You know. Yeah, we may not necessarily agree with the Church on abortion, which you agree with the church, but but we agree with the Church on the death penalty. Now, I always thought the two things were sort of apples and oranges

a little bit. One. I think there's a very strong argument to be made that these are completely different situations. The Catholic Church has acknowledged the the legitimateness of the death penalty. It just has to be applied under just circumstances, and there is some room for disagreement. Many Catholics argue, I think in many cases convincingly that there's legitimate room for debate about when the circumstances exist that the death

penalty could be warranted. And there are some Catholics today who say, I think there are some circumstances today even where the death penalty is warranted, And it's more an argument of how do we correctly apply principles of Catholic morality as opposed to abortion, which there's no circumstance under which murder is okay, And that's just precisely what abortion is. The negative absolute prohibitions of the moral law, as seen

in the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet. Those are absolute negative prohibitions. It's intrinsically evil to kill an innocent person. It may not, in and of itself be evil to kill a convicted murderer, particularly if there is some sense that there's no other way to keep society safe from

that person. Okay. So I've always thought that Catholic liberals trying to say, well, yeah, we may descend from abortion, but you guys descend from the Church on the death penalty, so therefore just the same here. No, no, no, no, no, it's a different kind of thing. Catholic liberals dissenting from abortion are dissenting from a fundamental, un arguable position of ethics. Catholics who disagree about when and where and how the death penalty should or shouldn't be applied. I think are

disagreeing on prudential application of questions of Catholic ethics. I think, and I say this as someone who's not really a fan of the death but I myself am not really a fan of the death penalty, and you can label me a softy liberal, but I'm willing to take the guidance of JP two and Pope Benedict on this and say, yeah, I don't know that it's really a useful tool of criminal justice at this point, especially as it's exercised in America,

where people have twenty years worth of, you know, appeals before they're ever actually executed. I don't know that it's actually that effective a deterrent for criminal for the purposes of applying criminal law. Now, all that aside as it relates to Biden in his Catholicism. The thing I have always just been astonished by is that Biden campaigned on I'm gonna abolish the death penalty. He gets elected, and he proceeds to do nothing to abolish the death penalty. Nothing.

Even when he had unified Democrat control of the House, the Senate, and the White House, he did nothing to advance the abolition of the death penalty. Didn't introduce a bill. And most critically, what Biden could have done at any point over his four years in office is commute the sentences of everyone on death row. He just announced a moratorium on executions, but he didn't actually commute the sentences of anyone on death row. Why because he immediately realized

it would have been unpopular to do so. And it sort of showed to me. Biden's alleged Catholicism pretty much ends at the point of a priest poured water on his head when he was a baby, and a bishop anointed his forehead when he was confirmed, and he goes to mass. Outside of those things, and those are not insignificant things I believe as a Catholic, I believe in the sacraments. But outside of those things, his Catholicism has impacted his life in essentially no way, shape or form

as it relates to his public life. He hasn't even let the commitments of Catholicism that, you know, he's the idea of the Catholic Church being opposed to the death penalty. Again, there's more nuance to it than that, but let's just

accept it. Let's just take that as face value. Biden's Catholicism is so anemic he has allowed it to impact his public life so little that even with regards to this issue of the death penalty, an issue that he as a politician believes is unjust, a practice that he believes is unjust, a practice he believes should be abolished, a practice that his faith has guided him towards saying is unjust and should be abolished. He meets with Pope Francis.

Pope Francis is urging him to commute the sentences of these people, and his own party is largely supportive of this, but not people in swing states, not people in Pennsylvania, not people in Georgia. Not people in Pennsylvania, Georgia. What were the swing states? Sorry, I'm losing track of what were all the swing states? Pennsylvania and Georgia and North Carolina and Michigan in Wisconsin. Biden never commuted the death sentences of all the guys on federal death row over

the course of the four years of his presidency. Why because it would have been unpopular. The death penalty is still largely supported by people who are independents or moderately supported, and Biden didn't want to risk it, so he never commuted their death sentences again, in spite of the fact that he allegedly believes the death penalty is unjust and he's the one human being who could do something about

it more so than anyone. He could have commuted all of the death sentences of all forty one guys on death row with a snap of his fingers at any pointing over his four years in office, and he didn't because of politics. Now, after the election on Monday, December twenty third, he does it after the election when there's no political ramifications. But he doesn't quite. He only commutes the death sentences of thirty seven out of the forty prisoners on death row. Only thirty seven out of forty.

Which ones did he not commute The Boston marathon bomber, the Tree of Life synagogue shooter, and the guy who murdered nine people at the Emmanuel Ame Church in Charleston, South Carolina. So let me understand, you only oppose the death penalty unless it's for really, really really bad people. Oh, then I guess you don't actually oppose the death penalty.

Yet again, it's Biden demonstrating he's not gonna let his Catholic faith really influence him in a way that makes any kind of sense in any way, shape or form. We'll dig more into the absolute hypocrisy of pardoning only most of the people convicted for capital crimes, commuting the sentences of only most of the people convicted of capital crimes, not all of them. I mean, how illogical is that. We'll discuss this after the break. This is the John

Girardi Show on The Valley's Power Talk. President Biden on Monday announced that he was commuting the death sentences of thirty seven of the forty prisoners on federal death Row. Why only thirty seven of the forty? He didn't commute the sentences of the Boston marathon bomber, the Tree of Life synagogue shooter, someone who murdered people at synagogue, and the person who murdered nine people at the Emmanuel Ame

Church in Charleston, South Carolina. What does he say about now, I'm going to make the argument I want to talk. I'm talking about this from the perspective of Catholicism and Biden's Catholicism, which I've argued has basically never, at any point in his career, actually done anything to impact his beliefs and his ethics and how he exercised public office. And I'm astonish that this was like the one thing commuting the senses of people on death Row. It's the

one thing where at least some interpretation of Catholicism. Okay, and the Catholic position, as I've noted, on the death penalty is a little more nuanced than this. But for the most part JP two and John Paul the second and Benedict the sixties of said, yeah, like, there might be some circumstances where the application of the death penalty is legitimate, but we think it's pretty rare, and so it's fine for Catholics just to advocate for the abolition

of the death penalty. And there I think it's legitimate to argue there could be some circumstances under which the death penalty could be applied Legitimately. There's some disagreement among different Catholic thinkers about are there such circumstances today? Pope Francis does not think so. But is that a you know, some kind of infallible teaching of the pope or is that his prudential judgment. I think I think it would

be more his potential judgment. But but I do say this as someone who's really not in favor of the death penalty. So I say this is someone not in favor of the death penalty. But I find Biden's position hopelessly muddled and seems to have absolutely no bearing to the teaching of the Catholic Church. Why well, if Biden thinks that the death penalty is unjust, how can he

commute only thirty seven of the forty sentences? Okay, Biden says, today, I am commuting the sentences of thirty seven of the forty individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my administration has imposed on federal executions in cases other than terrorism and hate motivated mass murder. So the death penalties only unjust except for really, really, really bad guys.

If that's your position, then you're not really opposed to the death penalty. I remember Fanny Willis, the prosecutor for Fulton County, Georgia, who's made a name for herself by, you know, trying to pay off her boyfriend for the prosecution of Donald Trump, and that case has gotten she's been completely kicked off that case, which is hilarious. So now some other district attorney's office in Georgia has to

take it up. And I don't think any district attorney's office in Georgia is wanting to take up the twenty twenty Georgia election case against Trump. Fanny Willis ran for DA of Fulton County, Georgia, which encompasses Atlanta, on the of I oppose the death penalty. She got elected on that. She got elected. You know, this is one of those you know, Soros prosecutors. But then they had a case where a guy shot up a bunch of Asian massage parlors.

Some of you might remember that case. The thing was about two or three years ago, and she said, I was opposed to the death penalty, but now that I've seen this, I have to change my position. I have to change my position. So now she's pursuing the death penalty for that guy, which makes me think, okay, well, then you didn't really oppose the death penalty. If you only oppose the death penalty except for someone who's really

really bad, then you don't oppose the death penalty. You either opposed it or you don't, And it's entirely foreseeable, given that we're talking about capital cases, that the death penalty is going to have to be applied or not applied to people who do horrendously difficult things like terrorist attacks or racially motivated murder. So I asked, So, it seems that President Biden has basically decided he's not gonna

let his Catholicism impact him at all. He waited until after the election when there would be no political ramifications. But maybe he thought, you know, if I pardon the Boston marathon bomber, there could be some residual political ramifications for that for Democrats even after I'm gone. So I'm not going to pardon him, or the person who shot up that synagogue or the person who shot up the African American church in South Carolina, because those were racially motivated.

So that guy's gotta go well, as opposed to all the murderers on death row who weren't motivated by hate. Oh, hate motivated shootings, those people got to be executed, but not the love motivated shooting. Why Why is the motivation of racism worse than the motivation of I want to kill this cop I want to, you know, I'm sure if we go through the other thirty seven people on

death Row, it's not like they're all lovely people. Are they that much worse that I'm You know, someone who shoots up a synagogue or shoots up a Black church because they don't like Jews or Black people is obviously horrible and evil and a monster, and that's a terrible thing to do. It's not like the other thirty seven guys on death row are nice people. So I think

it's official. Even in commuting the death sentences of thirty seven of the forty people, Biden has basically demonstrated his Catholicism has impacted his career in public office basically zero percent. So bravo. I mean, I guess you know he can applaud himself for doing thirty seven fortieths of what he perceives to be the right thing. When we return, I want to talk more about the death penalty theoretically and see if I can actually discern what Biden believes about it.

Not sure if I can. Next on The John Gerardi Show, with President Biden commuting thirty seven of the forty death row inmates on federal death Row, I want to talk a little bit about the death penalty itself theoretically, how legal thinkers think about it, how Christian legal thinkers think about it. Let you step in a little bit to my old criminal law classroom. There are four justifications for

criminal punishment that legal theorists have thought of. Okay, and this is we sort of learned about this in law school and sort of doing legal theory stuff. Okay, So there are four kinds of justifications for criminal punishment. One is correction, reform, rehabilitation. Okay, the idea of this person's doing bad stuff, let's give him some kind of punishment that that's really designed towards rehabilitating this person, reforming this person.

This reform as a motive for criminal punishment became very popular, especially in the twentieth century. Departments of you know, running prison systems became known as part departments of corrections. So we're going to correct the behavior. And this motivated a lot of I think things that in some cases are good to have. I think it's good for jails or prisons to have, you know, programs for someone, Hey, why don't you actually try and do something useful while you're

in prison? Finish your get your high school diploma, work on this thing, get some skills developed, and maybe when you get out you can have a better, different path in life. And and I think that's a legitimate thing. Now a lot of people don't take advantage of that, but there are many people who do, and that's a good thing. Okay. So correction is one of the motives of criminal justice punishments. The other is basically holding, restraining

this person, holding this person. This person's committing crimes, he's a dangerous person. We punish him by putting him in jail just to get him away from society, keep him from doing more harm. That is ah motive, and I think a strong one for criminal justice punishments. We can't trust this person out on the streets. We gotta hold him in a secure place so he can't harm more people. Another motive is deterrence, deterrence for this individual person and

deterrence for the broader population. California has learned about the value of having some kind of deterrent. If people know that they're not really going to get punished that badly for doing bad things, they're going to keep doing bad things, simple as that. So you have to have punishments for different kinds of crimes that are at least serious enough to be a deterrent. That's that is a valuable, important thing.

And then there's the idea of vengeance or retribution. Now, there are some legal theorists who think that retribution vengeance. You did a bad thing, a bad thing needs to happen to you. There's some legal theorists who think that this is an inherently silly motive or an inherently wrong motive for criminal justice punishment. I wouldn't say so. I would say that there it is an important moderating factor. Actually.

For basically, Okay, if you steal four hundred dollars worth of merchandise from a store, your sentence shouldn't If you shoplift four hundred dollars worth of merchandise, you should be punished, but you shouldn't be punished as much as if you came into a store with a shotgun and stole two thousand dollars worth of merchandise. That person should be punished more. He did more wrong things, He did more seriously wrong things.

If you embezzled five thousand dollars, your sentence shouldn't be as serious as the person who embezzled, you know, ten million dollars like the bit whise CEOs. Okay, So vengeance or retribution as a motive for criminal punishment, it's really kind of a thing of proportionality for sentencing purposes. You've done something really bad, give you a worse sentence. You've done something less bad, we don't give you quite as

serious a sentence. Now, those are the four different motives for criminal punishment, okay, rehabilitation keeping someone away from society, detaining someone deterring future bad behavior, deterring bad behavior, and then retribution, having the punishment fit the crime. Proportionality and sentence. Now, John Paul the Second as pope, he was charged with providing ethical guidance for the Catholic Church, and he wrote about the death penalty and wrote about the death penalty.

You know, and by the way, I think sometimes we as Americans and American Catholics, looking at how John Paul the second was writing and thinking and talking about the death penalty, we were looking at it from the relatively sane perspective of American criminal law. Where American criminal law is largely a pretty just system has been over the course of the twentieth century, largely in many cases a

pretty just system. Most of the people convicted of murder in the United States, one the vast majority, did it, and two were convicted by some reasonable, fair judicial process. Now, the fact that we can't say with certainty that one hundred percent of them did it is one of the arguments against the death penalty. You know, you make a mistake with the death penalty, you can't go back and

fix it. That's a fair critique, I'd say. But John Paul the Second wasn't just writing for the American experience. He was Pope of the whole Catholic Church, and pope of the whole Catholic Church in the twentyth century, i e. The century of communist empires who executed gazillions of people, including gazillions of people from his own home country of Poland. You know, John Paul's the Seconds writing about the death penalty in you know, towards the end of the twentieth century.

But looking back on one hundred and fifty years of liberal governments and in some cases super far right governments being just totally bathed in blood of people that they executed through some kind of judicial process. So John Paul the Second wrote basically, looking at those four principles, of those four principles of criminal justice, he focused on detaining keeping society safe from someone, and he taught basically, unless

it's necessary to keep society safe from someone. And here he's in the late twentieth century saying, I think prisons are a lot better now than they were in you know, the twelve hundreds. The death penalties not going to be fairly applied or justly applied by principles of Catholic teaching unless necessary to keep society safe from someone. And he thought that the circumstances of that were fairly vanishingly rare, and thus that Catholics could just advocate to abolish the

death penalty. Joe Biden's principles seemingly are just I'm going to pardon commute the death sentences of everyone except for these three or four people that it would be really politically unpopular for me to commute their sentences. And that's why I say, I don't think Biden's Catholicism even impacted

him here. If he actually thinks the death penalty is wrong, that we can keep society safe from these people without the death penalty he would have commuted all forty, but no, he just he says, I'm only commuting the death sentences except for mass terroristic murder or racially motivated murder. Are those better kinds of murder? Or or worse kinds of murder? Somehow? Anyway, Biden has continued his sort of hypocrisy and lack of Catholicism. Even in doing what some what Catholics might think is

the right thing here, he still can't do it right. Basically, I think everything about Biden's Catholicism has been phony. I think it has impacted him no more than like a social club he tends to attend on Sundays. He has refused to let it impact his politics, his conception of what justice means. Even in doing this, which Pope Francis wanted him to commute these death sentences, even now, he

can't really le Catholicism totally impact him. When we return the Christmas Story on the John Girardi Show, the Christmas Story from the first chapter of the Holy Gospel. According to Saint John, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God, All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made. That was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness,

and the darkness has not overcome it. A reading from the second chapter of the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke. Reading from the second chapter of the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke. In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment when Coirinius was governor of Syria, and all went to be enrolled, each to his own city.

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed,

who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered, and she gave birth to her first born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the beginning, and in that region there were shepherds out in the field keeping watch over their flock by night, And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear.

And the Angel said to them, be not afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people. For to you is born this day in the city of David, a savior who is Christ's Lord. And this will be a sign for you. You will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heaven post praising God and saying glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among men with whom He is clost.

When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherd said to one another, let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord had made known to us. And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph in the babe lying in a mate. And when they saw it, they made known the same which had been told them concerning the child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary kept all these things, pondering them

in her heart. Merry Christmas from the John direction. See you next time. Non power time