We post news and comment on federal criminal justice issues, focused primarily on trial and post-conviction matters, legislative initiatives, and sentencing issues.
IS THE BIDEN COMMUTATION WAVE BREAKING ON POLITICAL SHOALS?
As I reported last Thursday, President Biden granted clemency to nearly 1,500 Americans on CARES Act home confinement, people who the White House says “were placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic and who have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities.”
Biden has promised additional clemencies, and there is no shortage of candidates. But if he anticipated the congratulations of a grateful nation, hw ia probably disappointed.
In Pennsylvania, there’s a firestorm over one of those receiving commutation. Michael Conahan was convicted of funneling juvenile defendants to two private, for-profit detention centers in exchange for $2.1 million in kickbacks, a scandal known as “Kids-for-Cash.” That is, he took bribes to send kids to for-profit juvenile prisons with sentences disproportionate to their crimes He pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy and was sentenced in 2011 to 17½ years in prison. He was released to home confinement in Florida under the CARES Act in June 2020.
Sandy Fonzo, a mother who blames her son’s suicide on the emotional toll that being wrongly placed in detention exacted, said, “Conahan’s actions destroyed families, including mine, and my son’s death is a tragic reminder of the consequences of his abuse of power. This pardon feels like an injustice for all of us who still suffer.”
(Conahan was not pardoned. Rather, his sentence was commuted, but his conviction remains intact).
The Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, also condemned Biden’s decision, telling reporters that his fellow Democrat “got it absolutely wrong”, the Pennsylvania Capital-Star reported.
The Washington Post said:
For Biden, this is another unforced error. More broadly, it raises fresh questions about presidential clemency going too far and whether it should exist at all. There was outrage when former president Donald Trump pardoned allies such as Stephen K. Bannon, Paul Manafort and Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law. And there was outrage over Biden pardoning his son Hunter. It could all get even more outrageous if Biden grants preemptive pardons or Trump pardons the January 6 rioters.
Such dubious grants of presidential mercy reinforce a belief that America has a two-tiered justice system where the wealthy and connected fare much better than everyone else — and certainly better than the young people who came before Judges Conahan and Ciavarella in Luzerne County.
Meanwhile, Biden has been blasted for commuting the sentence of an Illinois CARES Act confinee. A former city official in Illinois who orchestrated the largest municipal embezzlement in state history. Rita Crundwell—with four years to go on a 235-month sentence for fraud, is among the people granted clemency. Crundwell, who was taken out of Dixon, Illinois, city hall in handcuffs back in 2012, stole something like $53 million in city funds during her tenure as city comptroller.. She used the funds to pay for a lavish lifestyle that included raising champion quarter horses and buying a $2 million tour bus, jewels, furs, multiple homes and other trappings. All the while, the City of Dixon struggled to pay for infrastructure and other projects.
Meera Sachdeva, a former Mississippi oncologist, received clemency on her 20-year sentence handed down in 2012 for defrauding Medicare by providing diluted chemotherapy drugs and using old needles at her cancer clinic. Her clinic was said to be so unsanitary that multiple patients were admitted to local hospitals with infections after being treated there. One of Sachdeva’s patients claimed to have contracted HIV because of old needles.
The Washington Free Beacon said in a review of those who received clemency that “many of the recipients were serving sentences for serious crimes.”
Advocacy groups have been calling for a broad range of additional clemency grants, including for people on federal death row and with marijuana convictions. Biden has previously issued blanket pardons for those convicted of minor marijuana-related crimes, but those didn’t make any federal inmates eligible for release, because none of the recipients was in prison.
Rachel Barkow, a New York University law professor and expert on federal clemency, said during an Ohio State clemency conference that commuting the sentences of those on CARES Act home confinement is “low-hanging fruit” because they’re already out of prison.
Barkow expressed concern last Wednesday, the day before the clemency was announced, that CARES Act commutation would be the limit of Biden’s clemency actions. “I’m a little worried that he’s only going to do that and he’s going to try to make it out like that’s some big deal when that’s not a big deal at all. That’s not even the bare minimum,” she said. The hue and cry from both sides of the aisle—focusing on individual cases rather than the common-sense commutation of the entire cohort—could make Biden shy away from anything further.
At the same time, the CARES Act clemency was unreasonably opaque, leaving out some people with perfect home confinement records and unremarkable crimes while including people whose offenses – like the kids-for-cash judge and the horse-breeding embezzler – whose commutations sparked predictable media anger. I am aware of at least three people – including a woman who was raped at FCI Dublin but is now on CARES Act home confinement – who were omitted from the list without explanation.
Nevertheless, Biden continues to come under intense pressure from a coalition of civil rights, criminal justice, and religious groups urging him to grant relief to several classes of federal offenders, including the 40 people on federal death row and nonviolent drug offenders.
Last week, faith leaders – including black pastors, Catholics, former corrections officials, civil rights advocates, and current and former prosecutors – called on Biden to commute all federal death row sentences before Trump, who supports capital punishment, takes office.
Others are calling for commutation of sentence for women who suffered sexual abuse at FCI Dublin. “We all just feel so passionately that if Biden can pardon his son, he can definitely grant clemency to survivors of this heinous abuse by federal government employees,” former Dublin prisoner Kendra Drysdale told The Guardian.
Meanwhile, President-elect Trump told Time Magazine last week that he would offer clemency to most of the rioters who stormed the Capitol. “It’s going to start in the first hour,” he said. “Maybe the first nine minutes.” However, in a filing in a DC sentencing last week, the government warned that a “pardon would not unring the bell of conviction. In fact, quite the opposite. The defendant would first have to accept then pardon, which necessitates a confession of guilt.”
Harrisburg, WBRE-TV, ‘Kids for Cash’ victim reacts after Biden commutes sentence for Pennsylvania judge (December 13, 2024)
Sauk Local News Network, Biden commutes prison sentence of Rita Crundwell, former comptroller who embezzled $53M from city of Dixon (December 12, 2024)
Washington Free Beacon, Drug Lords, Ponzi Schemers, and Corrupt Officials: Meet Joe Biden’s Clemency Recipients (December 13, 2024)
Daily Beast, Mom’s Outrage Over Biden’s Presidential Clemency for Corrupt Kids-for-Cash Judge and Cohort (December 13, 2024)
Newsweek, She Stole Millions From Taxpayers to Buy Show Horses. Biden Set Her Free (December 13, 2024)
The Hill, Who are the people convicted in Capitol Riot Trump could pardon? (December 14, 2024)
Reason, Biden Issues More Pardons and Commutations Under Pressure From Criminal Justice Groups (December 12, 2024)
Newsweek, Could Joe Biden Pardon Everyone on Death Row? (December 10, 2024)
Guardian, US shuts down prisons amid scrutiny over sexual abuse and crisis of suicides (December 5, 2024)
– Thomas L. Root
President Biden this morning commuted the death sentences of 92.5% of those on federal death row, converting the sentences of 37 men to life without parole less than a month before Donald J. Trump will return to the Oval Office with a promise to restart legally sanctioned killing.
The Bureau of Prisons had to transfer extra personnel from around the system to USP Terre Haute for the executions, a step that became a COVID superspreader event for the federal prison system as the personnel carried the virus back to their home institutions, where it galloped through staff and inmate ranks.
A broad collection of groups and people opposing the death penalty — including civil rights groups, religious organizations, current and former law enforcement officials, ex-prison workers and murder victims’ relatives — had called on Biden to commute the federal death sentences. Nevertheless, the predictable outrage against the commutation began within hours of the announcement, with the New York Post already trumpeting that “Biden commutes death sentences of child killers and mass murderers 2 days before Christmas.”
