Broad & Liberty ran my piece on Crime reporter and author George Anastasia’s take on President Biden’s commutation of Kaboni Savage’s death sentence.
You
can read the piece via the below link or the below text:
Paul Davis: Biden lets Philly murderer Kaboni Savage off of death row
President Biden’s parting gift to America was to pardon or commute the sentences of scores of violent criminals. One of the criminals whose death sentence was commuted to life in prison was Kaboni Savage, a major Philadelphia drug dealer who ordered multiple murders, including the murder of four children.
Retaliating
against a former criminal associate-turned FBI witness, Kaboni Savage ordered
from his prison cell the firebombing of the witness’s home in 2004. Killed in
the fire were the witness’s mother and her fifteen-month-old child, as well as
three other children aged ten, twelve, and
fifteen.
The
FBI later caught Kaboni Savage on tape in his prison cell laughing and
suggesting, “They should stop off and get him some barbecue sauce and pour it
on them burnt bitches.”
A
jury sentenced Savage to thirteen death sentences. But President Biden
overturned the jury’s decision and commuted this mass murderer’s death sentence
to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
I
reached out to veteran crime reporter George Anastasia, the author of several
true crime books about the Philadelphia-South Jersey Cosa Nostra organized
crime family, including “Blood and Honor,” which the late Jimmy Breslin called
the best organized crime book ever written, and “The Goodfella Tapes,” in which
he quoted a FBI recording of a elder mob guy who explained to a potential mob litigant
“that goodfellas don’t sue goodfellas. Goodfellas kill goodfellas.”
George
Anastasia covered the Kaboni Savage case as a reporter for the Philadelphia
Inquirer, so I asked him what he thought of Kaboni Savage.
“He
was a monster,” Anastasia replied. “He was a very despicable individual. The
firebombing of that house underscored all that and afterwards the feds bugged
his cell, and he was joking about it. That’s horrible.
“Here’s
the thing; he was pardoned but all that means is he’s going to spend the rest
of his life in prison, and you could argue that’s a fitting punishment. He’s
not coming home. He is going to spend the rest of his life in horrible
confinement. He’s going to be caged up like an animal and that’s exactly what
he was, the way he comported himself.”
True.
But in my view, I said to George Anastasia, the death penalty is justified for
criminals who commit heinous crimes, such as the ones Savage was convicted of.
So I think he should have been executed.
“He
got commuted to life without parole,” Anastasia pointed out. “It’s not like
he’s walking out the door. Should we have a death sentence? That’s a legitimate
argument. But what’s your definition of a heinous crime and what’s mine?
“The
jury decided Savage’s crimes were heinous and they sentenced him with the death
penalty,” I said. “President Biden overturned the jury’s verdict.”
“That’s
the way the system is set up. The system also allows for the commutation of
sentences,” Anastasia said. “Here is a horrible individual, probably more
violent and more despicable than any mob boss I ever wrote about. One of his
famous sayings apparently was ‘no witness, no crime.’”
I
asked Anastasia if Savage will be placed in a federal prison’s general
population, or will he end his days in a “supermax” prison, locked down 23
hours a day alongside the cells of cartel drug lords and terrorists.
“The
last time I looked he was in Florence, Colorado, which is a supermax. It’s a
grim existence.”
As
a reporter, Anastasia covered Kaboni Savage’s trial and provided extensive and
excellent coverage of the murderer, so I asked him what he was like in
court.
“He
appeared to be a fairly intelligent guy and almost low-key. Savage was a
sociopath. There was a contrast between who he was being portrayed as opposed
to who was sitting at the table. And then they started playing those horrific
tapes. You can’t get around those tapes. He buried himself.”
Who
was Kaboni Savage and what crimes did he commit?
“Kaboni
Savage was a North Philly boxer and then a drug dealer. He was very heavily
involved in the drug trade, and he had his own organization. One of the
intriguing things about the drug underworld of Philadelphia is that it was
never monolithic. It’s not like the mob. You have different neighborhoods and
different organizations. He rose up in that particular area of North
Philadelphia and he had an organization around him, and they were involved in
drug dealing. He was a terribly violent individual.
“One
of the first stories I wrote was about Tybius Flowers, who was going to be a
witness against him. Kaboni Savage had him killed, again from prison. He put a
hit out on him and that case disappeared. That’s where “no witness, no crime”
came from. He walked out of jail,” Anastasia explained.
“The
last couple of years I was at the Inquirer, I spent more time
writing about the drug underworld than the traditional underworld. If you look
at it, those guys had more of a negative impact on the city of Philadelphia
than the mob ever did. They literally destroyed neighborhoods, they killed one
another, and anybody who got caught in the crossfire. They had no concern for
human life. Kaboni Savage epitomized all of that.
“When
he was on the top of his game it was a horrible, horrible existence for a lot
of people.”
I
support the death penalty for heinous crimes, but as Anastasia points out, an
argument can be made that in a supermax cell for the rest of your life with
restricted access to the outside and no hope of release is a more fitting
punishment than a swift execution.
Paul Davis, a Philadelphia writer and frequent contributor to Broad + Liberty, also contributes to Counterterrorism magazine and writes the “On Crime” column for the Washington Times. He can be reached at pauldavisoncrime.com.
