President Biden’s commutation of the death sentences of 37 out of 40 men on federal death row in advance of a Trump administration that’s eager to speed up executions was a meaningful act of principle, as was keeping three politically motivated mass murders waiting for the fatal needle.
The problems with the death penalty are well known, from exhibiting racial bias against defendants of color, to the very high cost of appeals and the great time involved. Capital punishment also hasn’t proven to be much of any deterrent. And it runs the risk, however small, of taking an innocent life.
Of course, Biden didn’t spare all 40 of those on federal death row; he rightly exempted three prisoners from his act of mercy. These were the killer of 11 Jews who were praying in a Pittsburgh synagogue; the killer of nine Black parishioners in a Charleston church; and the radical Islamist killer of three Boston Marathon spectators.
Here, death is approximate and just. There is absolutely zero question about the killers’ guilt in those cases, nor is there any racial bias at work in the punishment. Most important, those three crimes were motivated not merely by cold-blooded disrespect for human life, but by an attempt to send a terrorizing message to society at large — a message against people simply because of who they are, or against the nation itself.
Mass killings that make political statements deserve to be in a class by themselves because they are effectively acts of war against our great, fragile, pluralistic society.
This is not to say that those who “only” abuse and murder children, as did two of those whose death sentence Biden commuted, are of higher moral standing. Anyone who intentionally takes innocent human life, leaving families and friends in ruins for the remainder of their days, has earned society’s wrath and, yes, some retribution.
Indeed, if the murderer of 20 first graders and six school employees in Sandy Hook had been sentenced to death (he wasn’t), we wouldn’t have argued against giving him the needle — even though his crime was motivated by perverse personal animus, not by racism or antisemitism or religious radicalism. There’s no exact science here in separating those guilty of some heinous crimes from others.
But if distinctions must be made for those who in general oppose the death penalty, carving out “terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder,” as Biden did, and cases where there is also no question of the perpetrator’s guilt and no potential racial bias at work in punishment, makes some modicum of sense, as they are more direct attacks on the very fabric of society. Which is why we support the death penalty for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should he ever be tried and for the racist murderer of 10 Black Buffalonians during a supermarket shooting.
We don’t know when the three men who remain on federal death row will order up their last meals and say their last words. Those days may never come. But if and when they do, we won’t mourn that loss of life at the hands of the state. We’ll reserve our sorrow for the people whose lives they brutally stole away in attempting to make a statement. In such cases, the United States can and should have the last word.