President Joe Biden is commuting the sentences of around 1,500 individuals who were released from prison and placed in home confinement during the Covid-19 pandemic and is pardoning 39 Americans convicted of nonviolent crimes. It’s the most substantial single-day clemency act in modern history.
The Thursday commutations announced are for individuals who have served sentences for home confinement for at least a year after being released. Prisons were particularly bad at spreading the virus, and some inmates were released partially to stop the spread. At one point, one in five prisoners had coronavirus, according to a tally kept by The Associated Press.
The president said he would take additional steps in the weeks ahead and would continue to review petitions for clemency. Barack Obama’s second-largest one-day act of clemency was 330, shortly before he departed office in 2017.
“America was built on the promise of possibility and second chances,” said Biden. “As president, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation, restoring opportunity to Americans to participate in daily life and contribute to their communities, and taking steps to remove sentencing disparities for nonviolent offenders, especially those convicted of drug offenses.”
The clemency follows a wide-reaching pardon for his son Hunter, who was prosecuted for tax and gun crimes. Joe Biden is under pressure from advocacy groups to pardon broad swaths of individuals, including those on federal death row before the Trump administration took over in January. He is additionally weighing whether or not to issue preemptive pardons to those who probed Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and who are feared to face potential retribution once he assumes office.
Clemency is the term for the sitting president to have the power to pardon, in which an individual is relieved of punishment and guilty, or to commute a sentence, which eliminates or reduces the punishment but doesn’t exonerate the wrongdoing. It’s customary for a president to be merciful toward the end of the term, using the power of the office of the presidency to end prison terms or wipe away records.
The White House lawyers said the pardoned people had been convicted of nonviolent crimes like drug offenses and had turned their lives around. They include a woman who led emergency response teams during natural disasters, a doctoral student in molecular biosciences, a decorated military veteran, and a church deacon who has worked as an addiction and youth counselor.
Biden previously issued 122 commutations and 21 pardons
President Biden had previously issued 122 commutations and 21 additional pardons. He’s also widely pardoned those convicted of simple possession and use of marijuana on federal lands and in the District of Columbia and pardoned former U.S. service members convicted of violating a military ban on consensual gay sex that is now repealed.
Democrat Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, along with 34 other legislators, are urging the president to pardon human rights and environmental lawyer Steven Donziger, who was under house arrest or imprisoned for three years because of a contempt of court charge related to his work representing Indigenous farmers in a lawsuit against Chevron.
Others are advocating for the president to commute the sentences of prisoners on federal death row. Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, paused federal executions. The president had said on the 2020 campaign trail that he wanted to end the death penalty but never did. Now, with Donald Trump coming back into office, it’s likely executions will resume. During his first term in office, Trump presided over a number of federal executions carried out during the pandemic’s height.
More grants for clemency are coming before Biden leaves office on January 20. However, it’s not clear whether he will take action to guard against potential prosecution by Donald Trump, an untested use of the power.
According to people familiar with the matter who spoke anonymously to The Associated Press, the president has been taking the idea seriously and has been thinking about it for as long as six months — before the presidential election — but has been concerned about the precedent it would set.
However, those who received the pardons would have to accept them. Newly elected California Senator Adam Schiff, who was a member of the House committee that investigated the January 6 Capitol incident, said a pardon from the president would be “unnecessary” and that the president shouldn’t spend his last days in office worrying about this.
Before he pardoned his son, Joe Biden had repeatedly pledged not to do so. In a statement explaining his reversal, he said the prosecution had been poisoned by politics. The decision prompted criminal justice advocates and legislators to put additional public pressure on the administration to use the same power for average Americans. It wasn’t a popular move. Only around 2 in 10 Americans approved of his decision, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
