WASHINGTON — After the death of President Joe Biden on Sunday excuse me Black patriot Marcus GarveyHe influenced Malcolm X and other civil rights leaders and was convicted of mail fraud in the 1920s. A top Virginia lawmaker and advocate for immigrant rights, criminal justice reform and gun violence prevention were also pardoned.
Congressional leaders pushed for Biden to pardon Garvey, with supporters arguing that Garvey’s conviction was politically motivated and an effort to silence an increasingly popular leader who spoke of racial pride. After Garvey’s conviction, he was exiled to Jamaica, where he was born. He died in 1940.
Martin Luther King Jr. Reverend Garvey said of Garvey, “He was the first man to give millions of Blacks a ‘sense of dignity and destiny’, mass and class.
It is unclear whether Biden, who leaves office on Monday, will pardon people who have criticized or threatened the president-elect. Donald Trump.
Provision of preventive pardons — who could be investigated or prosecuted by the incoming administration for real or imagined crimes by Trump critics — would stretch the president’s powers in untested ways.
He has Biden set a presidential record for most individual pardons and commutations granted. He announced Friday that he was commuting the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. He also gave one Profuse apologies to his son Hunterwho was convicted of weapons and tax crimes.
The president announced that it was so changing sentences Of the 40 people on federal death row, 37 have their sentences commuted to life in prison as Trump, a staunch proponent of expanding the death penalty, takes office. During his first term, Trump presided over an unprecedented number of executions, 13, during the coronavirus pandemic.
Forgiveness relieves a person of guilt and punishment. A commutation reduces or removes the penalty, but does not excuse the offense.
Among those pardoned on Sunday were the following:
— Don Scott, who is the speaker The Virginia House of Delegates in a chamber tightly controlled by Democrats. In 1994 he was convicted of drug offenses and served eight years in prison. He was elected to the Virginia legislature in 2019, and then became the first black speaker.
“I am deeply humbled to receive an apology from President Joe Biden for a mistake I made in 1994 — one that changed the course of my life and taught me the true power of redemption,” Scott said in a statement.
– Activist for the rights of immigrants Ravi Ragbir, was convicted of a non-violent crime in 2001 and was sentenced to two years in prison and was to be deported to Trinidad and Tobago.
—Kemba Smith Pradia, convicted of a drug offense in 1994 and sentenced to 24 years in prison. He has since become an activist for prison reform. President Bill Clinton commuted the sentence in 2000.
—Darryl Chambers of Wilmington, Delaware, a gun violence prevention advocate who was convicted of a drug offense and sentenced to 17 years in prison. He studies and writes about gun violence prevention.
Biden changed the two people’s sentences:
—Michelle West, who was serving life in prison for her role in a drug conspiracy case in the early 1990s. West has a daughter who has written publicly about her struggles growing up with her mother.
—Robin Peoples, convicted of robbing banks in northwest Indiana in the late 1990s and sentenced to 111 years in prison. The White House said in a statement that Towns would face significantly lower penalties under current law.
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Associated Press writer Gary D. Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina contributed to this report.
