Ed Pilkington at The Guardian:

Joe Biden has carried out the largest act of presidential clemency on a single day in modern US history, commuting the sentences of almost 1,500 people and pardoning 39 Americans convicted of non-violent crimes. In a statement issued on Thursday, the White House said that Biden’s sweeping act of clemency was designed to “help reunite families, strengthen communities, and reintegrate individuals back into society”. The almost 1,500 commutations ordered by the president all relate to people who were released from prisons and placed in home confinement during the Covid pandemic. Thousands of prisoners were released to their homes as an emergency measure under the Cares Act to prevent the rapid spread of coronavirus through federal prisons. Each individual included in the new commutations had been serving their sentences at home for at least a year and had shown they were reunited with their families and were committed to rehabilitation, the White House said. “These commutation recipients have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities and have shown that they deserve a second chance,” they continued. The commutations come at a time when Republicans in Congress have been pressing to send thousands of federal prisoners on home release back behind bars. Criminal justice reformers have protested that the home release program has been highly successful, with a rate of new offending at a mere fraction of the overall recidivism rate in federal prisons. Under the commutations, the almost 1,500 Americans will retain their convictions but have their sentences reduced. The 39 people pardoned by Biden have had their guilty verdicts wholly erased.

The White House said the 39 were all individuals convicted of non-violent crimes, including drug offenses. Among them were a woman who led emergency response teams during natural disasters; a church deacon who had worked as an addiction and youth counsellor; a doctoral student in molecular biosciences; and a decorated military veteran.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt commuted the death sentence of Julius Jones on Thursday, just hours before his scheduled execution.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt commuted the death sentence of Julius Jones on Thursday, just hours before his scheduled execution, reports The Associated Press. Jones has maintained his innocence from death row for more than two decades in the 1999 killing of a suburban Oklahoma City businessman Governor Stitt commuted the 41-year-old Jones’ death sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility…

Joseph Gedeon at The Guardian:

Joe Biden, who leaves office next week, announced on Friday he was commuting the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of non-violent drug offences, saying he had now issued more individual pardons and commutations than any predecessor. The US president said in a statement that those benefiting from Friday’s action were “serving disproportionately long sentences compared to the sentences they would receive today under current law, policy and practice”. The move provides clemency relief to individuals who were sentenced based on discredited distinctions between crack and powder cocaine, and outdated sentencing enhancements for drug crimes, according to the statement issued by the White House. The unprecedented wave of commutations reflects a last-minute push by the Biden administration to remedy what critics have long described as systemic inequities in federal drug sentencing. “Too often, our criminal justice reforms only apply to the law going forward, leaving behind the very people and injustices that moved us to change,” the FWD.us executive director, Zoë Towns, said in a statement. It also marks one of the most significant mass clemency actions in US history, addressing the controversial crack-powder cocaine sentencing disparity that disproportionately affected communities of color – a policy partly shaped by Biden’s own 1994 crime bill and long criticized by reform advocates. In December, Biden commuted the sentences for 37 of 40 federal inmates on death row, converting them to life in prison without parole, before Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office on 20 January.

Peter Montgomery at People For The American Way's RWW:

Ed Martin’s enthusiastic support for Jan. 6 insurrectionists created bipartisan Senate opposition to his confirmation as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, along with his right-wing extremism and record of ethically and legally dubious abuses of power while serving as interim U.S. Attorney.  After Senate opposition forced President Donald Trump to withdraw Martin’s nomination, Trump rewarded his loyalty with a few titles at the Justice Department, including pardon attorney. News broke this week that Martin is considering recommending a full pardon for Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who repeatedly threatened bloody civil war in the weeks leading up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol. When Trump issued mass pardons for nearly everyone convicted in the Jan. 16 attacks, he commuted the sentences of Rhodes and more than a dozen other Oath Keepers and Proud Boys convicted of the most serious crimes. Rhodes had been sentenced to 18 years of jail for seditious conspiracy and other charges, but Trump set him free. Rhodes later appeared standing behind Trump at a political rally.  Trump’s commutation got Rhodes out of jail but kept his conviction intact.  Now Martin is considering whether to recommend a full pardon for Rhodes and his fellow conspirators.

David Smith at The Guardian:

Joe Biden has commuted the sentences of 37 out of 40 federal death row inmates, changing their punishment to life imprisonment without parole. The decision follows mounting pressure from campaigners who warned that the president-elect, Donald Trump, backs the death penalty and restarted federal executions during his first term after a 17-year hiatus. “Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said in a statement released on Monday. “But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, vice-president, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.” It is the highest number of death sentences commuted by any president in the modern era. Among those spared is Len Davis, a former New Orleans police officer who masterminded a drug protection ring involving several other officers and arranged the murder of a woman, Kim Groves, who filed a brutality complaint against him. Davis also helped send three men to prison for more than 28 years before they were found to have been wrongfully convicted of murder and freed in 2022. During a brief interview Monday, Groves’s son Corey hailed Biden’s commutation of Davis’s death sentence, saying he always wanted the former officer to live as long as possible in prison. “I would like Len to wake up on his his 95th birthday and still be looking at concrete and barbed wire,” said Groves, who received a $1.5m settlement from the New Orleans city government in 2018 along with other family members over his mother’s murder. “I think that’s worse than any death sentence, so I don’t have any problem with what the president did.” There is also a commutation for Norris Holder, who was sentenced to death for a two-man bank robbery during which a security guard died. Prosecutors said Holder may not have fired the fatal shot. Another beneficiary is Daryl Lawrence, sentenced to death in the killing of Columbus, Ohio, police officer Bryan Hurst. Hurst’s former police partner Donnie Oliverio said in a statement: “Putting to death the person who killed my police partner and best friend would have brought me no peace. The president has done what is right here, and what is consistent with the faith he and I share.” The clemency action applies to all federal death row inmates except three convicted of terrorism or hate-motivated mass murder: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted of carrying out the 2013 Boston marathon bombing attack; Dylann Roof, who shot dead nine Black church members in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Robert Bowers, who stormed a synagogue in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community and killed 11 worshippers in 2018.