Biden commutes the sentences of 1,500 Americans, a record for one day

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said on Thursday that he is commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and pardoning 39 people convicted of nonviolent crimes in a sweeping act of clemency during his final weeks in office.

The commutations — the largest number by a president in a single day, the White House said — affect those who had been released from prison and placed in home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic. The pardons went to people convicted of nonviolent crimes, including drug offenses.

“America was built on the promise of possibility and second chances,” Biden said in a statement. He said the clemency represented his commitment to “help reunite families, strengthen communities and reintegrate individuals back into society.”

A pardon wipes out a conviction, while a commutation leaves the guilty verdict intact but reduces some or all of the punishment.

Biden’s action was one of the biggest grants of clemency in modern American history. President Jimmy Carter, on his first full day in office in 1977, issued a pardon that affected more people, for men who evaded the Vietnam War draft. But that was what is known as a categorical pardon; Biden’s commutations are for individual cases.

The announcement came two weeks after Biden issued a pardon for his son Hunter, who had been convicted of gun possession and pleaded guilty to income tax evasion. That decision was harshly criticized by both Republicans and Democrats because the president had long ruled out clemency for his son.

Biden has come under increasing pressure to use his clemency powers before he hands over power to President-elect Donald Trump. As a senator, Biden had championed a 1994 crime bill that many experts say fueled mass incarceration. He has since expressed regret for his support of the legislation, and he committed during the 2020 campaign to addressing the long drug sentences that resulted.

Some congressional Democrats and others have also called on Biden to reduce the sentences of all 40 people on federal death row to life without parole. Trump supports the death penalty and restarted federal executions after a nearly 20-year pause during his first term.

The fate of those who were moved to home confinement during the pandemic, when COVID was spreading rapidly through jails and prisons, has been of particular concern to activists in recent weeks. Some Republicans, who are set to take control of Congress next month, have tried to push legislation that would have forced them to return to prison.

The pardon recipients include multiple people who were convicted of drug crimes as young adults only to serve in the military and go on to support families of slain U.S. troops, help charities or train local firefighters. The Justice Department’s pardon attorney reviewed each of those cases before recommending them to White House lawyers, who then presented them to Biden.

Those who received commutations essentially had their sentences reduced to “time served,” meaning they will be released from home confinement in the coming weeks, according to a White House official who worked on the pardon process but requested anonymity to discuss specific details of Biden’s clemency action. Those people will still be required to check in with probation officers.

The recipients cleared the bar for commutation if they exhibited good behavior during their time in home confinement. Those who committed additional crimes or were confined to sober-living facilities were not included in this round of commutations, the White House official said, although he added that Biden’s team was still reviewing cases of people living in halfway houses.

The people in home confinement committed a range of crimes, including nonviolent drug offenses, Medicare fraud and illegally prescribing opioids. Biden also commuted the sentence of Jeffrey Yohai, a real estate developer and former son-in-law of Paul Manafort, the chair of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Yohai was sentenced in 2019 to nine years in prison for a series of fraud scams.

Another recipient was Michael T. Conahan, a former Pennsylvania judge who was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison in 2011 for wrongfully imprisoning juveniles in two for-profit detention centers in exchange for financial kickbacks. The Justice Department at the time called the case the worst judicial scandal in Pennsylvania’s history.

In his statement Thursday, Biden said that many of those people would have received lower sentences if they had been charged under current laws. They had also been serving their sentences at home for at least a year, according to the White House.

“These commutation recipients, who were placed on home confinement during the COVID pandemic, have successfully reintegrated into their families and communities and have shown that they deserve a second chance,” Biden said.

Wendy Hechtman, one of the prisoners moved to home confinement during the pandemic, woke up in Buffalo, New York, on Thursday morning to her husband alerting her to Biden’s announcement. She had been serving a 15-year sentence for conspiracy to distribute a form of fentanyl and had been worried she would not be able to attend her daughter’s wedding next year in Quebec. Before Thursday, she had planned on calling into the wedding.

On Thursday morning, Hechtman was scrambling to find out if she was one of the 1,500 people whose sentences were eased by Biden.

“To get this would be an absolutely indescribable relief,” she said in an interview Thursday morning.

Hours later, Hechtman was overcome when she saw her name on the commutation list.

“I will be dancing at my daughter’s wedding this summer,” Hechtman said. “I can’t wait.”

Biden said he would take more steps in the weeks ahead and continue to review clemency petitions. His staff has been debating whether he should issue blanket pardons for a number of Trump’s perceived enemies to protect them from the “retribution” he has threatened, people familiar with the discussion have said.

White House officials do not believe the potential recipients have actually committed crimes, but they have grown increasingly worried that Trump’s selections for top Justice Department positions indicate that he will follow through on his repeated vows to seek revenge. The idea would be to preemptively extend executive clemency to a list of current and former government officials, effectively short-circuiting the next president’s promised campaign of reprisals.

Other criminal justice advocates encouraged Biden to prioritize those currently behind bars for his next clemency action.

“There is more the president can and must do before leaving office,” said Insha Rahman, vice president for advocacy and partnerships at the Vera Institute of Justice. “Many of these people have served decades in prison on sentences that would not be handed down today and deserve a second chance.”

Until now, Biden has been relatively constrained in his use of the president’s clemency powers. He has issued 26 individual pardons and 135 commutations, according to a tally kept by the pardon attorney. The Office of the Pardon Attorney, part of the Justice Department, has received nearly 12,000 requests for clemency during Biden’s term.

But White House officials have defended Biden’s clemency actions, citing his decision to issue categorical pardons for people convicted of simple use and possession of marijuana. None of those people were in prison when he made his decision. He also cleared the records of former service members convicted of violating the military’s former laws against homosexual conduct.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2024 The New York Times Company