Op-Ed: Attorney General Dave Yost: President Joe Biden's commutations are not about justice
It is unclear from Joe Biden's long and meandering public record whether dementia has finally robbed him of his ability to think clearly, Ohio's attorney general writes.
President Joe Biden thundered about the demands of his conscience this week as he commuted 37 death sentences on Death Row. "I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level," he said. "In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted."
Here's a problem: there are 40 people on the Federal Death Row, which is more than 37. So he's against the death penalty, we must end it — except for those three guys.
As the Attorney General of Ohio, and a former prosecutor who put a man on our State's Death Row 21 years ago, I support the ultimate penalty for the worst of the worst offenders. But I can understand and respect the arguments on the other side, particularly from my Christian brothers and sisters.
But at least they have coherence in their thinking. President Biden does not.
Who are the three Biden left off his Christmas list? Three of the worst of the worst, without a doubt. They are the gunmen at the 2018 anti-Semitic attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh that killed 11; the racist killer of nine in 2015 at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church; and the guy who bombed the Boston Marathon in 2013, killing three and injuring 260 (as a matter of policy I do not use the names of convicted suspects — I will not dishonor their victims by offering them a moment of attention or acknowledgment).
Most of us would agree that if anybody deserves the death penalty, these guys do. There's not even any residual doubt about their guilt. They did it. I don't fault Biden for keeping them on Death Row. It's where they belong — though, if he really meant it, he'd have his Attorney General seek a date to impose sentence.
My problem is that, having conceded that at least these three deserve to die for their beyond-the-pale crimes, he went on to say that these killers do not:
A guy who was already serving a life sentence for raping and murdering his wife, a U.S. Marine. While serving his life sentence, he killed a prison guard with a hammer. I guess now he gets double-life-without-parole. How does that work?
Or how about the guy who sexually assaulted and stabbed to death two little girls, aged 8 and 9, riding their bicycles in a Chicago suburb. Four years later, he strangled a naval officer in her barracks.
And then there's the drug dealer who ordered the killing of 12 people — four of them children!
In Joe Biden's book, they all deserve a break, and many more with equally awful stories. No needle for them!
Nor did the president offer any individualized rationale for any of these acts of presidential mercy, no explanation of why they were good or beautiful or true. The commutations were announced in a press release on a government website, like a batch of grants being doled out to favored local jurisdictions...just because, conscience and stuff.
A president of greater thought might have made these decisions singly, or at the very least avoided the hubris of attempting to sweeten his own personal gut check with the violins of righteousness.
It is unclear from Joe Biden's long and meandering public record whether dementia has finally robbed him of his ability to think clearly, or whether he has always been such a creature of the political wind that this basket of unjust decisions is simply a continuation of his intellectual incontinence.
One thing it is surely not: Justice.
Dave Yost is Ohio’s 51st attorney general; his goal is to “do big good” for the people of Ohio by protecting consumers, rooting out corruption, defending the environment, ensuring an open and competitive marketplace, and fulfilling the many other duties of the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.