In era of unexpected, one decision shocked

Every year is interesting in its own way. This one included the death of a hero, Alexei Navalny; the toppling of a dictator, Bashar Al Assad; the implosion of a president, Joe Biden; two assassination attempts on a former president, Donald Trump; the conviction for hush money payments made by a former president, Donald Trump, and the re-election of a former president, Donald Trump.

Any one of the above-mentioned events would have been shocking taken in isolation. Personally, I think the one true thing that has changed in the American psyche is that we are no longer capable of being shocked.

But I was shocked at how actually shocked I could still be by some things.

One of those things was the pardon of most federal death row prisoners, issued by Biden.

He had already made waves with his pardon of his son Hunter, a recovering drug addict who may or may not have also been involved in shady “bring your daddy to work on grifting in the Ukraine” deals.

Presidents have the power to do these things, regardless of how repellent they may appear to be. Let it rest, I said.

But then Biden, who clings to the tattered threads of his Catholic identity with the desperation of a man nearing Judgment Day invoked the “each life is precious” philosophy of the church as well as the troublesome incidence of wrongful convictions and commuted the death sentences of 37 out of 40 federal prisoners.

That isn’t exactly a pardon, as most will be automatically converted into life sentences.

But it has the same effect: An erasure of the decisions judges and juries arrived at after reviewing the facts of each case.

One of those cases involved Kiboni Savage. This is a man who ordered the firebombing of a home in North Philadelphia that took the lives of four children.

They were incinerated in their beds. The hit was ordered by Savage who was incarcerated at the time, in retaliation for the witness testimony provided by the children’s relative.

Any suggestion that Biden is motivated by the moral teachings of our shared faith becomes laughable when you listen to our current president’s lectures on how the dignity of women is based upon their ability to issue death sentences to their unborn children.

No pardons for them, even in the face of their absolute innocence.

But even beyond that incongruent hypocrisy, the idea that people who have committed the most heinous crimes should not suffer the most heinous penalties is one of the most troubling and repellent things that have come from our evolving views on criminal justice.

I am used to the arguments of progressives and their allies in the faith communities that capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment, which by the way it doesn’t.

I have heard the litany of cases where innocent people have been wrongly convicted and then wrongly executed. That last situation is compelling, to the point where I’d agree to a moratorium until actual guilt was established beyond any — not a reasonable — doubt.

But there is no reason to look at a man like Kiboni Savage, whose crime is inhuman and whose guilt is undisputed, and argue that his life matters more than four children burned alive at his mandate.

So I suppose the biggest takeaway from 2024 is the fact that Joe Biden still had it in him to shock me with his bizarre conception of which lives matter.

Christine Flowers is a columnist for the Delaware County Daily Times. Contact her at:

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