By The Associated Press’s Colleen Long
President of Washington,Bidenon, Joe Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, who was convicted of mail fraud in the 1920s and influenced Malcolm X and other civil rights leaders, was posthumously pardoned on Sunday. A prominent Virginia politician who supports criminal justice reform, gun violence prevention, and immigration rights was also pardoned.
Supporters of Garvey’s conviction contended that it was politically motivated and an attempt to suppress the risingly popular leader who talked of racial pride, and congressional leaders had campaigned for Biden to pardon Garvey. Garvey was deported to his birthplace of Jamaica following his conviction. In 1940, he passed away.
Garvey was the first guy to give millions of Black people a feeling of dignity and destiny on a large scale and level, according to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
It’s unclear if Biden, who steps down on Monday, will grant pardons to anyone who have been threatened or chastised by President-elect Donald Trump.
Preemptive pardons for real or perceived crimes committed by Trump’s detractors that the next government could look into or prosecute would be an unproven use of presidential authority.
Biden presented the pardons and commutations as consistent with our country’s fundamental covenant.
“When people we love fall and make mistakes, Americans pick them back up,” Biden said at the Royal Missionary Baptist Church in South Carolina.
We don’t betray one another. We support one another. That is our country’s solemn covenant. “We pledge an allegiance to each other, not just to an idea,” Biden stated.
FILE – On January 10, 2024, in Richmond, Virginia, Del. Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, waves to family members in the gallery as the 2024 session of the Virginia General Assembly opens at the Capitol. (Steve Helber/AP Photo, File)AP
Biden has awarded more individual pardons and commutations than any other president. On Friday, he declared his intention to commute the sentences of nearly 2,500 individuals found guilty of mild drug charges. In addition, he pardoned his son Hunter, who had been charged with tax and firearm offenses.
Just as Trump, a vocal supporter of the death penalty’s expansion, takes office, the president said he was commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 inmates on federal death row, changing their punishments to life in prison. During the lengthy coronavirus outbreak, Trump oversaw a record 13 executions during his first term in office.
A pardon absolves a person of punishment and guilt. A commutation lessens or does away with the penalty, but it does not absolve the offender of responsibility.
Those who were pardoned on Sunday included:
Biden commuted two individuals’ sentences:
This article was written by Gary D. Robertson of the Associated Press in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Darlene Superville of Charleston, South Carolina.
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