United States: Joe Biden commutes 2,500 sentences

Three days before leaving power, Joe Biden announced on Friday that he had commuted the record number of nearly 2,500 sentences of those convicted of non-violent drug offenses, claiming to be the American president who has granted the most pardons and commutations.

These convicts “endure long sentences, disproportionate to the sentences they would have to endure today with regard to the practice of law and jurisprudence,” writes the democrat in a press release.

Joe Biden has already granted 39 pardons and 1,500 commutations in December and commuted the sentences of 37 of the 40 sentenced to death by federal justice.

“Crazy harm to black and colored people”

The democratic leader, a fervent Catholic, wishes, through this “act of clemency, to bring comfort to individuals sentenced to long (prison) sentences based on a distinction which no longer has reason to exist between cocaine and crack », a drug that wreaks havoc among working-class African-Americans.

Inequality between white and black people in the judicial and prison systems has fueled accusations of racism in the United States for decades.

These “cruel and excessive prison sentences that have done incredible harm to black people and people of color have been the cornerstone of federal policy for generations,” thundered in a press release Kara Gotsch, director of the Sentencing Project organization which battle for reform of the American prison system.

Half a century of political life

One of the authors of 2018 federal laws that softened some drug penalties, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, welcomed the fact that “some of the errors in our criminal justice system are being corrected and people who deserve it are benefiting.” of a second chance.

Joe Biden warned that he would “continue to examine additional commutations and pardons”, until Monday noon, when he will leave the Oval Office to Republican billionaire Donald Trump, thus closing half a century of political life.

The White House does not cite any names of those convicted, while the media have been speculating for weeks on the possibility that the president would preemptively pardon at the last minute elected officials and senior officials who could be threatened with legal action once Donald Trump invested.

Joe Biden’s son pardoned in early December

American presidents decide on hundreds of pardons and commutations during their mandate, with a notable acceleration just before leaving.

At the beginning of December, Joe Biden reneged on his commitment by pardoning his son Hunter Biden, who was awaiting his sentences in two cases of illegal possession of a firearm and tax evasion.

His predecessor and soon-to-be successor Donald Trump also pardoned in December 2020 the father of his son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner, Charles Kushner, sentenced in 2004 to two years in prison for tax embezzlement. The latter was appointed ambassador to Paris.

Bill Clinton (1993-2001) pardoned in 2001, on the last day of his mandate, his half-brother Roger Clinton, convicted of cocaine possession in 1985. Both Charles Kushner and Roger Clinton had served their prison sentences before being pardoned.

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