Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo, joined “The Faulkner Focus” Monday to react to President Joe Biden’s decision to commute the death sentences of 37 federal inmates, including mass murderers and child killers, a move that comes not even two weeks after he went through with the “largest single-day grant of clemency” in American history. Schmitt said the decision cements Biden’s legacy as “one of the worst presidents” in American history.
BIDEN CONSIDERS COMMUTING THE SENTENCES OF FEDERAL DEATH ROW INMATES: REPORT
ERIC SCHMITT: It’s two days before Christmas. I can only imagine the grief and the shock that these families are experiencing as they get ready for the holidays, remembering the loved ones that were lost and now having to deal with this sort of insult to injury.
And I think Joe Biden, in his effort to ‘Trump-proof’, we saw some of that. For the next administration, whether it’s hiding the workers or things at the border, this is just beyond the pale. And I think he’s cementing his status as one of the worst presidents in American history, certainly this side of Woodrow Wilson. … It’s important, as a former prosecutor myself, I think it’s important to talk about the victims here. Lexis Roberts went on a camping trip with her mother and Thomas Sanders. Thomas Sanders, on the way back, took her mother out and executed her in cold blood in front of Lexis, then slit Lexis Roberts’ throat and let her die in the woods. This is someone that Joe Biden, on the eve of Christmas, decided to commute his sentence. This is nuts. This is totally nuts. And so, the outrage is real, it’s justified. And again, Joe Biden, on his way out, is again cementing his status as one of our worst presidents.
President Biden is commuting the sentences of nearly all the inmates on federal death row, a move that comes not even two weeks after he went through with the “largest single-day grant of clemency” in American history, the White House announced Monday.
Of the 40 inmates on federal death row, according to DeathPenaltyInfo.org, Biden is commuting 37 men sentenced to death, reclassifying their sentences to life without the possibility of parole.
The three inmates not included are: Robert Bowers, who is responsible for the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018, which left 11 people dead; Dylann Roof, a White supremacist who killed nine Black parishioners at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who worked with his now-dead brother to perpetuate the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three people and injured hundreds.
Biden is the first president to openly oppose capital punishment, and his 2020 campaign website declared he would “work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example.”
The men being resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole are convicted of various murderous acts against one person or multiple. Among the victims of the 37 men are law enforcement officers, children and other inmates.
A handful of the men on death row were also set to be executed with their co-defendants.
