A Florida prison warden made one final request to Joe Biden that shocked him

Nov 25, 2024

Joe Biden’s time in the White House is ending. 

People are trying to get one last favor from him. 

And a Florida prison warden made one final request to Joe Biden that shocked him. 

Prison warden asks Joe Biden to stop all federal death sentences before he leaves office

The clock is ticking on Joe Biden’s Presidency.

One of the last major decisions for the Biden White House is pardons and commutations before the clock runs out. 

Granting clemency for federal crimes is typically one of the last things a President does at the end of their term. 

A former prison warden who backed President-elect Donald Trump had a shocking request for Biden. 

Former Florida State Penitentiary warden Ron McAndrew asked Biden to commute all death penalty sentences issued in federal and military cases. 

“I voted for President Trump in all of his campaigns, and I agree with him on most of his positions, but not the death penalty,” McAndrew said. “I have written to President Trump personally to ask him to stop calling for more executions.”

McAndrew is a pro-life Catholic and an Air Force veteran who called himself a “law-and-order guy.”

He oversaw the death penalty being administrated in Florida during his time at the State Penitentiary. 

Prison warden changes his mind on death penalty

McAndrew oversaw eight executions in Florida which led him to change his mind on the death penalty.

Florida’s electric chair nicknamed “Old Sparky” was known for its malfunctions that some claimed created a cruel and unusual punishment. 

The state stopped using the electric chair in 1999 and switched to lethal injection. 

A 1997 electric chair execution of convicted murderer Pedro Medina shook McAndrew and the others who watched it. 

“A plume of smoke and then a flame that came down underneath the helmet and out right in front of my face, had it come a few inches further, it would have actually burned me,” McAndrew said. 

That incident led to Florida eventually using lethal injection. 

“The heaving of the chest is an example,” McAndrew told Fox News Digital. “You can see it if you’re up close, and you’re the executioner or a member of the team. You can see that they’re trying to break out of their own body, so to speak. But the witnesses don’t see this. They see it as, like, a clean, a sanitary form of killing someone.”

McAndrew said he was haunted by the memory of the criminals he saw executed. 

“I feel compelled to say there is one thing in particular that I agree about with President Biden,” McAndrew wrote Biden in a letter. “We share a strong opposition to the death penalty. President Biden has the power to show mercy through the process of executive clemency, and I urge that he do so expeditiously for everyone on the federal and military death rows.”

The former prison warden said he would even excuse terrorists like the Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev from the death penalty. 

“If this same inmate was doing life without the possibility of parole, he’d be working between 40 and 60 hours per week whether he liked it or not,” McAndrew explained. “He would be making a contribution…rather than being a burden on the taxpayers, sitting in a cell getting room service for 25 years.”

Trump has vowed to expand the federal death penalty to human trafficking and illegal aliens murdering an American citizen. 

DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.

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