Thursday, December 14, 2023
PMT: The Slow President
Sometime today, I think, my third piece for the Atlantic should come out. Like the first two, it's about clemency.
President Biden has accomplished a lot: I admire his focus on infrastructure, his approach to the war in Ukraine, and the way he never talks about wanting to be a dictator, even a little. But I'm sorely disappointed in him regarding the thing that I really care about, clemency.
Basically, he has done a few things for show that had little impact (granting commutations to people already out of prison on the CARES Act, giving pardons to low-level marijuana offenders who mostly don't know they received it) while failing to address the 17,000-ish backlog of cases in the real pipeline. The average age of cases my clinic has handled is probably about four years, and some people have waited six with no decision. It's a disappointing show of timidity that is especially stark given the role Biden played in creating laws that drove over-incarceration and racial disparities. The Mercy Truck (pictured above) has broken down.
I do realize that there are a lot of reasons to support Joe Biden... but I sure don't feel any enthusiasm for the task right now.
