Joe Biden's callous decision to spare the lives of brutal killers just before Christmas has reopened old wounds for the families of the victims.
The families of Katie Skeen and Donna Major are speaking out after Biden spared the man who killed the two women during a 2017 bank robbery.
38-year-old Brandon Council murdered Skeen, 36, and Major, 59, at CresCom Bank in Conway, South Carolina, in a callous act captured on surveillance footage.
"She was shown no mercy at all. This man walked into the bank, never said two words to her. Shot her three times in total. He went and shot her coworker, Katie Skeen as well, who was totally defenseless and unaware of anything happening,” Major’s husband, Danny Jenkins, told Fox and Friends.
“I can’t even believe that this is actually happening…”
A jury took just 32 minutes to find Council guilty. But in one stroke of a pen, Biden wiped away the jury's decision and snatched justice from the victims.
"He's a low life. Both Biden and Council, they're both low lifes," Skeen's mother, 78-year-old Betty Davis, told the Daily Mail.
The timing of Biden's pardons, which came just before Christmas, has been criticized with many calling it cruel to the victims.
"I just felt heart-sick when they told us. It was like my world had just fallen apart all over again," Davis said.
Most of the people Biden spared from capital punishment are little known to the public. Biden has been accused of moral hypocrisy for excluding those individuals who are the most infamous: Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Tree of Life synagogue shooter Robert Bowers and white supremacist shooter Dylann Roof.
Biden said he could not "in good conscience" allow President-elect Trump to carry out death sentences for 37 different individuals after Biden issued a moratorium on federal executions.
But Biden said he was making exceptions for those convicted of terrorism or acts of "hate," which conveniently left out the three most notorious individuals on the list.
"Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss," Biden said.
Of course, to the families victimized by the 37 people Biden spared, his definition of "hate" is arbitrary and does nothing to mitigate the pain of loss - or the thirst for justice.
