Government

Biden Commutes Scumbag Former Judge's Sentence

He put kids in prison for profit. But that doesn't mean he wasn't a candidate for clemency.

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There are a lot of innocent people imprisoned in the federal prison system. Sometimes the Supreme Court goes ahead and kills them. But most people in the federal system are, you know, actual criminals. So when a president issues blanket clemency to 1500 people because they’re low recidivism risks, that means a lot of actual criminals are going to be released.

Like former Pennsylvania judge Michael T. Conahan.

Conahan spent his time on the bench sending children to for-profit prisons in exchange for kickbacks from the prison industry. All told, Conahan (and his co-conspirator also former judge Mark Ciavarella) took in almost $3 million. He contributed to years of human misery exploiting children for personal profit and he was sent away for 17.5 years.

This week, he found his sentence commuted by Biden’s broad clemency drive. It’s angered liberals who otherwise support clemency but have responded with “no, not like that!” as though presidential leniency wouldn’t involve mercy to people who’ve done horrible things. And right-wing media, who generally cheer private prisons and jailing children, have jumped on this story to sow more rage at Biden:

The mother of a victim of Conahan’s disturbing crime fumed upon hearing of his commutation.

“I am shocked and I am hurt,” Sandy Fonzo, whose son committed suicide after he was locked up as part of the scheme orchestrated by Conahan and former judge Mark Ciavarella, said in a statement.

“Conahan‘s actions destroyed families, including mine, and my son‘s death is a tragic reminder of the consequences of his abuse of power,” she added, according to The Citizen’s Voice. “This pardon feels like an injustice for all of us who still suffer.”

From the perspective of victims, no sentence can ever be enough. If we listened exclusively to victims when it comes to sentencing, no one would ever be released. And yet, Conahan was not serving a life sentence. The law determined a term of years and he’d already served around 80% of his sentence. He’s in his 70s, he will never be a judge again, and he would be out in three years anyway.

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He’s not been vindicated by this Biden action. Biden likely never considered the substance of any of these 1500 or so people. He just ratified an existing policy that deemed them not worth keeping in a prison cell.

Biden — who faced criticism for issuing a historically low set of pardons and commutations — issued this mass tranche to avoid the logistical nightmare of returning folks to prisons who have been serving home detention under the CARES Act, which released select low-risk inmates to house arrest at the height of COVID when prisons risked indirectly imposing the death penalty. In fact, this is the exact policy many were asking Biden to adopt a few weeks ago. Former Acting Director of the Bureau of Prisons Hugh Hurwitz wrote in The Hill:

But there is one group they mentioned that seems like an easy decision for the president, and the first group President Biden pardons.

During the Pandemic, the Bureau of Prisons moved over 36,000 people to home confinement under the CARES Act. The CARES Act expanded the amount of time individuals could be placed in home confinement during the pandemic.

Under the criteria established by the Trump Administration’s Department of Justice, these people were carefully selected as low or minimum security risk, non-violent offenders. They have completed more than half their sentences, with high risk for complications of COVID. Most were older (over age 50) or had underlying health conditions. All had clean conduct while in prison and were deemed to not be of risk to the community.

Oh yeah. Trump actually signed the CARES Act and made the decision to let Conahan out of prison. The NY Post’s coverage above didn’t mention that part or find any quotes from victims decrying that leniency. Weird oversight.

Putting these people back in prison — especially when most are elderly and have served the overwhelming majority of their sentences — is a waste of government resources. Ideally, they could keep continuing serving their full sentences at home, except the incoming Trump administration raised the prospect of returning everyone to prison with all the attendant taxpayer costs that entails. If home detention is off the table and it’s about prison or commutation of those who’ve served most of their sentence, Biden chose the former.

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Personally, I think there are many people in the prison system more deserving of presidential clemency than Conahan, who deserves to live in a cell the same way he wrongfully consigned children to live. It’s a cruel irony that he’s the beneficiary of the same leniency that he denied so many. That said, if he’s released as part of a general policy to ratify a decision to release low-risk inmates… I understand that it’s probably the right policy for the country.

But, hey, they aren’t talking about Hunter anymore.

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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