In one of his last actions as president, Joe Biden reduced Native American rights fighter Leonard Peltier’s life sentence on Monday. Peltier was found guilty of escaping from federal prison and killing two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Peltier, who is eighty years old, has spent nearly fifty years behind bars. Due to diabetes, hypertension, partial eyesight from a stroke, and episodes of COVID, his health has been deteriorating in recent years.
The White House noted in a statement that although the commutation will allow Peltier to remain in home confinement for the remainder of his days, it will not grant him a pardon for his underlying crimes.
After previous presidential appeals for clemency failed, Peltier’s daughter, Kathy Peltier, said she was shocked to hear what Biden had done.
Regarding Biden’s choice, she remarked, “I’m just thankful that he had the balls and the guts to do it,”
On Monday, the family of Jack Coler, one of the two agents who were shot dead, voiced their displeasure, claiming that a parole board’s June decision to refuse supervised release was founded on a careful examination of the case.
“The Coler family is frustrated and very angry after years of fighting to keep Peltier incarcerated,” read the statement. “Pelletier was not granted parole by the board. This revelation adds to the surprise and disappointment of President Biden’s last-minute commuting decision.
Peltier said that he was prepared to be released from prison in a statement issued by the NDN Collective, an advocacy group formed by Indigenous people.
“I’m going home,” Peltier declared, “it’s finally over.” “I want to show the world I’m a good person with a good heart.”
Peltier’s most recent request for release was denied by the U.S. Parole Commission in July, leaving Biden to decide his future. Law enforcement officials have fiercely opposed Peltier’s commutation, arguing that his two consecutive life sentences are only related to the 1975 South Dakota shooting deaths of FBI agents Coler and Ron Williams. Peltier has long maintained his innocence.
In a letter this month, Christopher Wray, who took over as director of the FBI in 2017 and retired on Monday as President Donald Trump began his second term, attempted to convince Biden not to commute Peltier’s sentence, claiming that it would be “wholly unjustified and would be an affront to the rule of law.”
“Mr. President, I urge you in the strongest terms possible: Do not pardon Leonard Peltier or cut his sentence short,” Wray wrote in a letter.
Minutes before Trump’s inauguration, Biden announced his resignation. During his first term, Trump did not grant Peltier’s appeal for clemency, and previous presidents—both Republicans and Democrats—also chose not to step in.
The lawyer who pushed for Peltier’s release commended the departing president in a statement.
Attorney Kevin Sharp stated, “President Biden made a huge step toward healing and reconciliation with the Native American people in this country. “The injustice of Leonard Peltier’s conviction and ongoing incarceration was not acknowledged for almost 50 years, but because to the President’s gesture of mercy, Leonard can now return to his tribe and spend his last years there.
In 2022, Peltiert told NBC News that he had no interest in receiving a presidential pardon because it would be for a crime he maintains he did not commit. He claimed that he preferred the chance to be released from prison and to be given a new trial.
“I would love to go home,” Peltier stated over the phone from Florida’s Federal Correctional Complex Coleman. “My relatives wish to look after me. My tribe is interested in looking after me.
Nobel Peace Prize winners Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu, as well as human rights and religious luminaries like Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama, have supported Peltier’s release over the years.
The video for Rage Against the Machine’s “Freedom,” a hit song that helped the now-defunct alternative rock band become a voice for progressive issues and oppressed people, introduced Peltier’s tale to MTV viewers in the 1990s.
“Leonard has become a friend over the years and I am so glad at 80 years old and in poor health he will be able to spend his remaining years with family and friends,” band cofounder Tom Morello said on X on Monday, expressing his joy and rededicating the song to Peltier.
Peltier’s conviction, according to Nick Tilsen, CEO of the NDN Collective, is representative of the conflict between Native Americans and the federal government, especially on Indigenous grounds.
“Leonard Peltier’s liberation is our liberation we will honor him by bringing him back to his homelands to live out the rest of his days surrounded by loved ones, healing, and reconnecting with his land and culture,” Tilsen stated in a press release.
However, law enforcement agencies have accused Peltier’s followers of attempting to misrepresent the circumstances surrounding his arrest and conviction.
“Outraged” by Biden’s reprieve for Peltier, said Natalie Bara, head of the FBI Agents Association, a group that supports present and retired agents.
“This last-second, disgraceful act by then-President Biden, which does not change Peltier’s guilt but does release him from prison, is cowardly and lacks accountability,” Bara stated in a press release. “It is a cruel betrayal to the families and colleagues of these fallen Agents and is a slap in the face of law enforcement.”
According to the agency’s investigation files, Coler and Williams were on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota on June 26, 1975, to apprehend a guy who was wanted on a federal warrant for stealing cowboy boots.
According to the FBI, the agents radioed that they had been shot at during a ten-minute shootout while they were there. Both males were shot at close range and killed. The officials claimed that the only person on the reservation with the kind of weapon that could shoot the bullet that killed the agents was Peltier, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and later an activist with the American Indian Movement, a grassroots Indigenous rights organization.
However, the gunfight involved dozens of participants; two co-defendants were acquitted during the trial after claiming self-defense. According to court documents Peltier filed on appeal, the federal government had concealed a ballistics report showing the fatal bullets didn’t originate from his weapon, and no witnesses who could have identified Peltier as the shooter were presented when he was tried separately in 1977.
But according to the FBI, his conviction was “rightly and fairly obtained” and “has withstood numerous appeals to multiple courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.”
According to Kathy Peltier, her father was incarcerated prior to the onset of the Covid epidemic. According to her, the family is now “crying tears of joy” over the prospect of him being able to visit them and meet his dozen great-grandchildren as well as everyone who has helped him over the years.
Kathy Peltier, “It’s a relief,” she stated. “We’ll be able to sit about and talk for hours without having a time constraint, and we’ll be able to give him a real embrace. He has missed out on so much.