Mr. Clemency

[Doctor Phibes]

They should do away with Presidential pardons. They're ridiculous, in the same way that the British honours system is ridiculous, except with the Brits they don't let a bunch of criminals out of gaol, they just give them medals.

[George K]

@Doctor-Phibes said in Mr. Clemency:

They should do away with Presidential pardons.

It's as hard-baked into the Constitution as birth-right citizenship - probably even more so. It'll never go away.

[George K]

[Axtremus]

[George K]

@Axtremus said in Mr. Clemency:

Is that guy a Hamas dude himself or does he just have a brother who is a Hamas dude?

It's his half-brother, iirc. I'm sure that he had no association with the organization, right? RIGHT????

[George K]

@George-K said in Mr. Clemency:

It's his half-brother, iirc. I'm sure that he had no association with the organization, right? RIGHT????

Wrong:

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-833310

Mashaal was sentenced for 20 years on charges of financing Hamas through the Holy Land Foundation. According to Israeli media, he has been released after serving 16 years, and will spend one year in a rehabilitation facility.

Allegedly, the shortening of Mashaal's term comes alongside the shortening of four other American-Palestinians, including Muhammad al-Zain, a relative of Hamas Deputy Chairman Musa Abu Marzouk. The US court ruling, Arab media stated, means that the sentences will be shorter by "dozens of years."

[Mik]

Klobuchar is throwing Joe under the bus on this - Face The Nation.

[Horace]

The pardon of Hunter is polling very badly, last I heard.

[Mik]

All of it is. She dumped on the Hunter pardon too.

[Horace]

I wonder why prisoner swaps advantageous to the US, as per the pardon documents, are left to the last days of a last presidential term.

[jon-nyc]

He’s got over a month left. He could get a few thousand more pardons in easily.

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Mr. Clemency:

He’s got over a month left. He could get a few thousand more pardons in easily.

In theory, he could pardon everybody on the planet in perpetuity.

[George K]

There are two takes to the reactions to clemency, afaict.

1. POTATUS just doesn't give a flying fuck what people think of him. He's at the end of his career, and he will fade off into the sunset with no influence.

2. The Democrats who realize that POTATUS is at the end of his career, and they owe him nothing any more and he can't hurt them. Finally speaking what they've been thinking.

He could get a few thousand more pardons in easily.

And considering #1 and #2 above, he probably will.

[Mik]

[George K]

@Jolly said in Mr. Clemency:

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/biden-commutes-roughly-1500-sentences-pardons-39-people-116713842

https://freebeacon.com/biden-harris-administration/black-widow-who-murdered-3-ex-lovers-freed-in-bidens-historic-clemency-spree/

A Maryland woman dubbed the "Black Widow" for murdering two husbands and a boyfriend for insurance money is now free after President Joe Biden commuted her 40-year prison sentence, undercutting the White House's claim that Biden released only "non-violent" offenders in a clemency bonanza last week.

Among the 1,500 federal convicts granted clemency was Josephine Virginia Gray, who was sentenced to 40 years in prison in 2002 for insurance fraud schemes connected to the murders of three men between 1974 and 1996. Gray was resentenced to the same amount of time again in 2006 following a series of appeals.

The COVID-19 pandemic allowed Gray—and the rest of Biden's clemency recipients—to serve out their sentences in home confinement. Now, Biden has freed Gray altogether in what the White House called the "largest single-day grant of clemency in modern history." Biden, in order to correct historical "injustices," granted clemency to those "convicted of non-violent crimes who were sentenced under outdated laws, policies, and practices that left them with longer sentences than if the individuals were sentenced today," the White House said.

But Gray’s body count "puts the lie to [Biden’s claim that] these are non-violent offenders," according to a former federal prosecutor who handled her case.

"It pisses me off, as you can imagine," James Trusty, who prosecuted Gray as assistant U.S. attorney in Greenbelt, Md., told the Washington Free Beacon.

[jon-nyc]

It’s true they didn’t review the individual cases when they decided to grant clemency to all the folks on home confinement and that was disastrous in certain cases. To me the most notorious is the Pennsylvania judge who sent kids to private prisons for money.

But I’m not going to call them out for lying about only releasing non-violent offenders. This woman was only convicted of insurance fraud after all. It would be interesting to know why they didn’t charge or didn’t win the murder charges.

[Jolly]

Does anybody think Biden is actually reviewing any of these cases?

[George K]

@jon-nyc said in Mr. Clemency:

This woman was only convicted of insurance fraud after all.

...and not of killing three people to get the money.

That speaks worlds about our judicial system.

@Jolly said:

Does anybody think Biden is actually reviewing any of these cases?

I've heard of day-drinking, but that's just silly.

[LuFins Dad]

Man, how is Hunter going to paint so many pieces? Or is he selling prints now? Making money on the volume rather than margin?

[jon-nyc]

@Jolly said in Mr. Clemency:

Does anybody think Biden is actually reviewing any of these cases?

I think these were decided as a class rather than individually. People convicted of non-violent offenses who were granted home confinement during Covid back when half the countries prisoners were testing positive. That program had its own requirements (non-violent, older or more at risk to COVID, etc) which they decided to trust. So you get a few cases like these.