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Katrina Vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, Nation
President Biden pardoned a couple of turkeys On Monday, as part of the Daft ritual, organized by National Federation of Turkey to support agribusiness profits in the run-up to Thanksgiving. It’s one of the rare times — aside from Republican grumblings about Hunter Biden’s legal troubles or reports that Donald Trump is letting go of right-wing allies like Steve Bannon and Roger Stone — when the new national media has systematically focused on the president’s executive order power. pardons and pardons.
That’s a pity, because the government “give reprieve and pardon”, as set forth in Article II of the US Constitution. offers presidents extraordinary powers to intervene not only in individual cases of people who find themselves on the wrong side of federal law enforcement, but also to address injustices in a criminal justice system that often fails to deal with crime and deliver justice. So, as Thanksgiving approached this year, criminal justice reformers and members of Congress tried to get the president to consider pardoning the people.
Last week, Leah Wang, a senior research analyst at the Prison Policy Institute, did the job for a broad view of when and how to pardon – especially in capital cases.
“Every November, it’s become an easy tradition for the president and some governors to ‘pardon’ turkeys before Thanksgiving, removing them from the dinner table. But when the country’s political leaders take part in the annual turkey pardon, it’s hard not to think about the chronic underuse of pardon powers in the U.S., especially for people on death row,” Yang explained. “If pardons in Turkey are about choosing life over death, using pardon powers to free the rest of death row is an easy way for elected leaders to act on those values and reject the horrific practice.”
Ian is right on this particular point; and she is not alone this year in advocating that President Biden, in his final months in office, use the president’s pardon and pardon powers to correct disparities and injustices in a criminal justice system that has been widely criticized by conservatives and liberals for its unfair treatment of low-income Americans and people of color.
Sixty-seven members of the chamber signed the letter dated November 20 to President Biden, who advocated for a bolder use of executive pardon powers as a tool to achieve justice and save taxpayer dollars that are now used to incarcerate Americans who have not been convicted of violent crimes and do not pose a threat to society.
“As you continue to work for the American people in the final months of your presidency, we urge you to use your pardon authority to reunite families, address long-standing injustices in our legal system, and put our country on a path to ending mass incarceration,” they wrote. representatives.“Mass incarceration remains a persistent systemic injustice that eats away at the soul of America.Our country has the highest rate of incarceration in the world: nearly two million people in jails and prisons across the country. The extreme use of incarceration has resulted in one in two adults having a family member incarcerated.’
The letter, which was circulated by several members of the House of Representatives who have focused on these issues in the past — U.S. Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, James E. Clyburn of South Carolina and Mary Gay Scanlan of Pennsylvania—laid out a moral and practical case against mass incarceration, arguing that “although the most marginalized Americans feel the worst consequences, the entire country pays the price of mass incarceration. In strictly fiscal terms, the researchers estimated that the total annual cost to taxpayers is $182 billion, more than twice the entire budget of the Department of Education. Our country spends extraordinary amounts of money to keep people in prison for long periods of time, including those who do not pose a significant threat to public safety. Among the growing population of federal prisons, 90 percent of people are convicted of non-violent crimes. The reliance on incarceration in our legal system has created a crisis that needs to be addressed.”
There will always be cases for individual postponement. For example, a signatory to a mass incarceration letter, Wisconsin Representative Mark Pocan has been performing for a long time – together with National Caucus of Native American States Legislators – to pardon Leonard Peltier, an 80-year-old indigenous rights activist who served nearly half a century in federal prison for crimes he says he did not commit and based on trials that were riddled with misconduct.
But there is a strong case for a wider use of the pardon power. “It’s a force that has been a really important release valve in an overcrowded, overburdened criminal justice system,” says Emily Galvin-Almanza, attorney, executive director of Partners for Justice. “Presidents and governors can use pardons and pardons to free — and commute — people whose stories are meritorious or compassionate, in fact, who simply don’t deserve the continued punishment they’ve received.”
Galvin-Almanza makes a timely point when she reminds us that “Back in the 1920s, it was used all the time. In the past, presidents have pardoned and pardoned thousands of people. Right now, with the notable exception of President Obama, who has used his clemency and clemency powers, presidents simply don’t. (So) we’re getting to a situation where Joe Biden pardons turkeys every Thanksgiving and has yet to pardon one of the forty people sitting on (federal) death row — whose lives he could be saving right now.”
