President Joe Biden is garnering an interesting combination of righteous indignation and weird sympathy from the American people in his waning days in office for his biggest presidential pardon — that of his son, Hunter, completely exonerating him for his many legal problems. Presidential pardons, it must be said, can be viewed as an odd vestige of ancient royal prerogative when it comes to wiping clean the slates of people who have been convicted by our legal system and suddenly find themselves exonerated with the stroke of a pen by a chief executive who may or may not know all of the details of the people he is pardoning. But it has been fascinating to see even some strong political opponents of Biden say that in the case of Hunter they would do the same thing — that blood is thicker than water, and that they empathize with what he did, as a father. This week, Biden issued  a mass commutation covering nearly 1,500 formerly incarcerated people who had already been released on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic when prisons were particularly dangerous places to be for elderly or immunocompromised people. One of those commutations has rightly caused outrage. Because Biden commuted the sentence of a former Pennsylvania judge, Michael Conahan, who had been at the center of a notorious “kids-for-cash” scandal, Politico reports: “Conahan was convicted in 2011 of funneling juveniles to for-profit detention centers in exchange for more than $2 million in kickbacks. He was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison after pleading guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges.” Thirteen years ago, the U.S. attorney who brought the case called the scandal “the worst in Pennsylvania’s history,” especially because it forced the state to vacate thousands of juvenile convictions. On what planet is this guy a good candidate for commutation of his sentence? Fellow Democrat and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said that Biden got this one “absolutely wrong,” Politico reports. “I do feel strongly that President Biden got it absolutely wrong and created a lot of pain here in northeastern Pennsylvania.” Conahan “deserves to be behind bars, not walking as a free man.” In attempting to excuse this particular commutation among the more than a thousand granted, an anonymous administration official said the specifics of Conahan’s case were literally not considered. Instead, he fit into a broad set of criteria of felons who were nonviolent, not a sex offender or terrorism-related. And it is true that Conahan was already serving his term outside of prison in home confinement because of COVID concerns. He likely would have been released from home confinement in August 2026. Mercy is a good thing, maybe even for the wicked. Nonetheless, we share the feelings of Amanda Lorah, who was one of the kids wrongly imprisoned by the judge, who told a local TV station that the move amounted to “a big slap in the face for us once again.” And those of Sandy Fonzo, whose son died by suicide after Conahan placed him in juvenile detention, who told the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, newspaper Citizens’ Voice she was “shocked” and “hurt” by the commutation. “Conahan’s actions destroyed families, including mine, and my son’s death is a tragic reminder of the consequences of his abuse of power.” Biden should have left Conahan locked up in his home.