Biden Administration Denies Commutation Petition

On January 3, 2024, the Biden Administration issued letters of denial to thousands of federal inmates who had petitions pending for commutations of their prison sentences. The mass denials were issued in an effort by the Administration to clear out its backlog of more than 18,000 pending clemency petitions. Biden, known as a tough-on-crime politician, has been referred to as the chief architect of the modern prison industrial complex for his years championing expansive federal police powers and Draconian and racist criminal penalties as a senator before rising to the presidency on a platform of racial equity and justice reform. However, Biden has been criticized for his administration’s failure to address justice reform and the continued imposition of particularly harsh penalties and federal prosecutorial overreach. Biden has granted the least number of commutation requests among modern presidents, and the federal prison population has increased under his leadership.

Among those denied clemency on January 3rd wasMark Jordan, wrongfully convicted of a 1999 prison homicide at the US Penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, where he was serving out a 27 year sentence for bank robbery. The denial came despite the fact that another prisoner, Sean Anthony Riker, has since publicly admitted to killing the victim, David Brian Stone, and mocked how easily he was able to manipulate federal officials into prosecuting Jordan for the murder. At the original trial, US District Court Judge Lewis Babcock denied Jordan’s request to put Riker on the stand to answer whether or not he had killed Stone. Babcock prevented Riker from testifying on the grounds that his doing so “would confuse the jury.” Jordan was convicted and sentenced to n additional 35 years in federal prison, where he has become a prominent jailhouse lawyer and defender of human rights. Following Jordan’s conviction, Riker made his confession public and analysis later determined that it was his DNA that had been recovered from the handle of the murder weapon, a homemade shank. Jordan’s alternative ground for commuting his sentence was no less compelling and  hinged on the fact that he was originally sentenced to 27 years for bank robberies he committed as an 18-year-old first-time offender. However, Congress had since clarified a drafting error in the law such such that were Jordan sentenced today under the current version of the law his resulting sentence would be 11 years, less than half that of his original sentence.

Although Jordan’s petition was based on factors that the Biden Administration had previously stated would warrant commutation, officials offered no reason for the denial.

Jordan, a published author and notable figure in the fight for national justice reform, has been a steadfast critic of Senator Joe Biden and his tough-on-crime legislation for decades before Biden’s unlikely ascension  to the presidency, and Jordan has publicly excoriated the current Administration for doing little to alleviate the nation’s over-reliance on imprisonment as a response to criminal offending or to otherwise reform our nation’s broken and unreliable justice system.