Pope Francis, the U.S. bishops, Democrat lawmakers, and human rights activists are begging President Joe Biden to commute the sentences of 40 criminals on federal Death Row in the waning days of his lame-duck administration.
“As President Biden prepares to leave office, please urge him to commute all current federal death sentences to terms of imprisonment before his term ends,” an Action Alert from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops pleaded on Monday.
“President Biden has an extraordinary opportunity to advance the cause of human dignity by commuting all federal death sentences to terms of imprisonment and sparing the lives of the 40 men currently on federal Death Row.”
Early this morning, The Wall Street Journal and other news outlets reported that Biden has provided clemency for 1,500 prisoners nationwide who were facing long sentences, including 39 people convicted of nonviolent crimes. The White House described it as “the largest single-day grant of clemency in modern history.”
This is a breaking element of the story, but one of the convicts who is now free is Shanlin Jin, a Chinese national living in Texas who was convicted of having 47,000 images of child pornography in his possession — including infants being raped. Jin was sentenced to 97 months in prison after pleading guilty, but Plano police stopped going through his computer after confirming 1,338 images.
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