The end of a presidential administration always brings with it a last-minute pardon spree. In recent years the practice has led pundits and politicians to worry that the men occupying the Oval Office don't have the ethics to handle such broad power.
Outgoing President Joe Biden ignited controversy this time around when he pardoned his son Hunter, even though Biden previously promised the American public that he wouldn't interfere in the prosecution.
Under pressure from a coalition of criminal justice advocacy and religious groups, Biden also commuted the sentences of all but three of the 40 inmates on federal death row, reducing their punishment to life in prison. In this case, the pardon power was a substitute (or autocratic workaround, Biden's critics charged) for death penalty abolition legislation that Biden promised during the 2020 campaign but that he and Democratic leadership never had any real stomach for.
