WTF Are These Pardons, Joe Biden?

Some of these people should be under the jail!

Stokely Carmichael, Amiri Baraka and Jamil Al-Amin (who was NOT pardoned), Library of Congress

Last week, handsome Joe Biden pardoned 39 people, and commuted the sentences of 1,499 others, for a total of 1,634 commutations during his term. What a swell guy, saving us taxpayers the price of three hots and a cot or monitoring for nonviolent offenders! Except, a few of these people are seriously fucked up. Why did he choose to give them a pass? It’s a mystery!

Possibly the worst on the sentence-commutation list, former Judge Michael T. Conahan, who was serving 17 1/2 years and had been granted home confinement during COVID for his part in the horrific “Cash For Kids” scandal in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. This asshole used his position as judge to defund the county-owned juvenile detention center and give that money to his friend Robert J. Powell to build two private kiddie lockups instead. Then he and co-defendant Judge Mark Ciavarella took $2.6 million in kickbacks to fill their friend’s prisons, locking up kids as young as eight years old for offenses like petty theft, jaywalking, underage drinking, truancy, smoking on school grounds, or failing to appear in court as witnesses, without notifying the kids or their parents that the kids were witnesses! They locked up literally thousands of kids.

Reported the New York Times (and you really should read the whole story if you haven’t, because it is NUTS): “Proceedings on average took less than two minutes. Detention center workers were told in advance how many juveniles to expect at the end of each day — even before hearings to determine their innocence or guilt.” Then Powell, Conahan and Ciavarella swanned around on a million-dollar boat in Florida called the “Reel Justice,” and partied together in a Florida condo they bought to try to launder their cash, because you can’t make this shit up.

It was the “trying to hide the money” part that got them in the end: in 2022, both Conahan and Ciavarella pleaded guilty to tax evasion and wire fraud, and were ordered to pay more than $200 million to nearly 300 people they victimized. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court threw out about 4,000 juvenile convictions involving more than 2,300 kids. But “sorry” isn’t enough for everything; one of the kids, Edward Kenzakoski, committed suicide after having to spend eight months in juvenile detention his senior year of high school for underage drinking at a party. He lost his chance at scholarships, and fell into deep depression.

Why would Biden commute the sentence of Conahan? And why not the other two guys in the scheme, for that matter? Sending kids to jail for money in an elaborate scheme is not some one-off mistake, it is life-ruining evil.

Why not pardon Native American activist Leonard Peltier, or Jamil Al-Amin, AKA H. Rap Brown, or Reality Winner? Or any of the other 157,504 people in federal prison? (Damn, does this country put a lot of people in prison!) It’s just weird.

Also on the sentence-commutation list, and also evil, Meera Sachdeva, a Mississippi oncologist, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2012 for defrauding Medicare. For at least four years, Sachdeva gave cancer patients expired and diluted chemotherapy drugs, and billed Medicaid and Medicare for the full price of the drugs. She also used old needles, and one patient apparently got HIV from a dirty needle used by her clinic.

This is turning into a list of sinners you’d meet on a tour of hell!

There’s Rita Crundwell, former comptroller of the town of Dixon, Illinois, who ripped off an entire town. She embezzled nearly $54 million over 22 years from Dixon’s coffers — the biggest municipal theft in history — to fund her quarterhorse breeding operation, and buy herself two fancy houses, a million-dollar motorhome, and a '67 Corvette and a Ford Thunderbird, while the streets of Dixon crumbled. She got 19 years and seven months for wire fraud, and has been living in a halfway house since 2021.

Also on the list, two Chinese spies, Yanjun Xu and Ji Chaoqun, who tried to steal US tech secrets, and also Shanlin Jin, a relative of a high-ranking member of the Chinese Communist Party who was convicted of possession of more than 47,000 images of child pornography. Biden at least got something for those: three days later the Chinese government released three Americans, two who had been charged with espionage, and one who’d been charged for drug offenses. And presumably the spies and well-connected creepo all will be soon deported back to China, so whatever, bye.

There’s a pharmacist, Babubhai Patel, who also defrauded Medicare by billing for drugs through a chain of pharmacies, and then shorted patients on their painkillers or wrote dummy prescriptions and sold the drugs he billed Medicare for on the street. Fayez Abu-Aish, who sold manufactured “Spice” he called “Scooby Snax.” There’s some random cocaine dealers. Why these cocaine dealers in particular? Who knows? It’s like pardoning a Thanksgiving turkey, just that butterball’s lucky day.

Some of these people do seem expunge-worthy. Kelsie Lynn Becklin pleaded guilty to a nonviolent felony charge for failing to provide information to police about a 2007 bank robbery. There’s Stevoni Doyle, a social worker who pleaded guilty to drug possession and check forging charges 23 years ago.

Call us Wavy Gravy, but maybe everybody should be able to apply to expunge petty convictions after multiple decades? Maybe it’s not good for society to make thousands of people fail a background check for the rest of their lives over a possession charge in their 20s. But rehabilitation after prison in America, it’s not really our thing, unless you are Martha Stewart.

And punishment and serving as a warning to others have a place too. There’s not enough years for that kiddie-prison judge, or the dirty doctor who let patients suffer. Sometimes prison and a big fat record for life can be richly deserved.

At least old Joe didn’t pardon Donald Trump?

[White House Clemency Recipient List / New York Times archive link / US v. Babubhai Patel et al. / NY Post / AP / Time Magazine / The Mississippi Link]