Biden Commutes 37 of 40 Federal Death Sentences to Life in Prison

Biden Commutes 37 of 40 Federal Death Sentences to Life in Prison

President Joe Biden commuted the federal death sentences for 37 of 40 inmates on death row.

On Saturday, Stacey wrote about the possibility of Biden commuting the sentences.

“Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole,” stated Biden. “These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.”

The only ones he did not commute:

• Dylann Roof murdered nine black people at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC, in June 2015.
• Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 2013 Boston Marathon bomber.
• Robert Bowers, the man who murdered 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue.

Biden even admitted he commuted the sentences so President-elect Donald Trump couldn’t execute them.

“In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted,” he said.

Then…then why not add Roof, Tsarnaev, and Bowers?

I hate the death penalty at all levels. All 40 inmates should have life in prison sentences.

Either all or none.

It’s all about politics. It would be politically dangerous to commute those three sentences and the Democrats know that.

“But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level,” Biden also said.

Then commute all of them. Stop playing games. This is another reason to end the death penalty. It allows you to play games with a person’s life.

I’m going to research the 37 prisoners. It is NOT easy to get the federal death penalty. I’ll add to this post as I learn more about the prisoners.

Jorge Avila-Torrez

Avila-Torrez is so notorious he has a Wikipedia page! In 2005, he murdered Laura Hobbs, 8, and Krystal Tobias, 9, on Mother’s Day.

WHOA. Authorities nabbed Jerry Hobbs, Laura’s father. He confessed to the crime even though he didn’t do it. The makes of this podcast disabled sharing, but you can watch it on YouTube. It’s about the police totally messing up and sending an innocent man to prison.

Hobbs spent FIVE years in jail awaiting trial.

I cannot stress this enough. Guilty or innocent…ALWAYS have a lawyer with you. Never ever talk to law enforcement without a lawyer.

A semen sample on Laura did not match Jerry.

So while the police failed, Avila-Torrez joined the Marines.

In 2009, he murdered Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Amanda Jean Snell, 20, in 2009.

Avila-Torrez managed to dodge the police again.

Authorities finally caught him after Avila-Torrez abducted two women he stalked in Northern Virginia. He took one woman to a secluded area. He raped her and left her for dead.

Thank God she survived and went to the police. The authorities got his DNA and attached him to other crimes.

Hobbs received a huge settlement. I doubt it makes up not just for his treatment but the fact that he lost his daughter:

In February 2014, while Avila-Torrez was incarcerated for the crimes, Hobbs accepted a $7.75 million settlement from numerous law enforcement agencies and municipalities connected with the Lake County Major Crimes Task Force. It was brokered by attorney Kathleen Zellner, who specializes in wrongful conviction cases.

He subsequently began appearing at wrongful conviction seminars as a panelist, and his case was a lightning rod in drawing attention to the county for its series of wrongful convictions under former Lake County State’s Attorney Michael Waller. The admissions often involved allegedly coerced confessions through questionable interrogation methods employed by the Waukegan Police Department, under the county task force aegis.

Thomas Sanders

Biden commuted Thomas Sanders’ death sentence. From Clarion Ledger:

He met Suellen Roberts there, and the two began a romantic relationship, which came to a tragic end when Sanders, Suellen and Lexis Roberts went away together over the Labor Day holiday in 2010. After visiting a wildlife park near the Grand Canyon in Arizona, Sanders shot Suellen Roberts with a .22-caliber rifle and left her body near an asphalt pit along a desert highway.

He then traveled from Arizona, through New Mexico and Texas, and ended up in a wooded area on Boothe Cemetery Road, where most of his maternal family is buried, and shot Lexis four times – three times in the head and once in the chest. He then slashed her throat four times and with so much force, the knife left cut marks on her cervical vertebra.

Though Sanders was specific in his descriptions of the placement of Suellen Roberts’ body and in the way he killed Lexis, he told mental health experts he couldn’t or wouldn’t talk about anything else.

Only Sanders knows why he killed Suellen and Lexis Roberts.

Anthony Battle

Anthony Battle received the federal death penalty in 1997 for murdering prison guard D’Antonio Washington, 31, in 1994. From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Battle was sentenced to die by an Atlanta jury for the Dec. 21, 1994, killing of 31-year-old guard D’Antonio Washington. Battle repeatedly struck Washington in the back of the head with a ball-peen hammer at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.

At the time, Battle was already serving a life sentence for the 1987 murder of his wife, a U.S. Marine stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Battle, whose lawyers said he was schizophrenic, was given a chance at the end of his trial to ask jurors to spare his life. Instead, he told them that Washington “died like a dog.”

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