US President Joe Biden is using his final days in office to grant a sweeping act of clemency to over 1,000 US prisoners. On December 12, Biden commuted the sentences of roughly 1,500 people who have already been released from US prisons during the COVID-19 pandemic and are currently in home confinement. Biden also pardoned 39 people convicted of nonviolent crimes. However, Biden has left unaddressed the demands of human rights organizations to pardon those with federal death sentences.
Groups organizing against the US’s vast system of mass incarceration are demanding that Biden do more with his presidential powers. Organizations such as the Innocence Project, the ACLU, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, issued a call on December 9 for Biden to commute all federal death sentences before his term ends. These organizations cite the racial bias and arbitrariness that exists in sentences of death in the US, as well as the failure of the death penalty to increase public safety.
Biden has not used his presidential pardoning powers to pardon any of the many political prisoners in the US. These include Leonard Peltier, an Indigenous freedom fighter who is currently the longest-held political prisoner in the United States. Peltier is currently 80 years old and has dealt with various health struggles, including being hospitalized in October, but was denied parole following his first parole hearing in over a decade.
Organizations such as the NDN Collective continue to call for clemency for Peltier. “This is promising momentum as we continue to work towards Clemency for Leonard Peltier,” stated the NDN Collective. “The President continues to show signs of mercy and justice for those incarcerated in the jails and prisons across this country.”
This act of clemency comes several days after Biden received criticism across the political spectrum for issuing a full and unconditional pardon for his son, Hunter Biden, covering all his federal offenses including tax and gun charges. This is despite the fact that President Biden and those in his administration had stated multiple times that the President would never issue a pardon for his son. As recently as November 7, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had insisted that Biden would never issue a pardon for his son.
