Forty people are on federal death row. Biden is under pressure to commute their sentences (read story here).
I’ll skip over the usual anti-death penalty arguments: Botched executions, racial bias, the danger of executing an innocent person, etc.
The best argument for leaving no one on federal death row when Trump retakes office on January 20, 2025, is Trump himself. Why satisfy his bloodlust? Isn’t it better to deprive him of the satisfaction?
That’s a very strong argument. After all, here’s a guy who boasted he could get elected president even if he stood in New York City’s Fifth Avenue and shot some presumably innocent person. (It turned out he was right, which says as much — possibly more — about his voters as it says about him.)
Here’s a guy who to argue the Central Park Five were guilty and should be killed years after they were exonerated and someone else confessed to the crime (see story here). And here’s a guy who rushed to empty the federal death row on his way out of office in late 2020 and early 2021 by shoveling inmates into the federal execution chamber.
Trump is one twisted, sick puppy. But so are the federal inmates awaiting their fate. Check out this list, which describes the crimes they committed. The surviving Boston bomber. A serial killer. Two notorious mass shooters. A cop who arranged the killing of a witness. A drug dealer who did the same. A pair of kidnappers who took ransom money and killed the abductees anyway.
Somehow, life in prison doesn’t seem adequate punishment for their crimes. Much as I dislike anything that gives Trump arousal, I think Biden should pass on these monsters, and let Trump do as he pleases with them after the courts are finished with them. Just don’t let him personally throw the switch, because once a degenerate tastes blood, it’s hard to get him to stop.