Biden commutes sentence for Leonard Peltier, Indigenous activist convicted in 1975 killing of FBI agents
With just moments left before he leaves office, President Joe Biden commuted the life sentence of indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, who was convicted in the 1975 killings of two FBI agents.
Peltier was denied parole as recently as July and wasn't eligible for parole again until 2026. He was serving life in prison for the deaths of the agents during a standoff on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He will transition to home confinement, Biden said in a statement.
"President Biden took an enormous step toward healing and reconciliation with the Native American people in this country," Peltier's former attorney Kevin Sharp said in a statement Monday. "It took nearly 50 years to acknowledge the injustice of Leonard Peltier's conviction and continued incarceration, but with the president's act of mercy Leonard can finally return to his reservation and live out his remaining days."
Sharp, a former chief judge of the federal U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, represented Peltier for five years and filed petitions for clemency, which does not change Peltier's conviction, on his behalf in 2019 and 2021.
The fight for Peltier's freedom is entangled with the Indigenous rights movements. Nearly half a century later, his name remains a rallying cry.
An enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota, Peltier was active in the American Indian Movement, which began in the 1960s as a local organization in Minneapolis that grappled with issues of police brutality and discrimination against Native Americans. It quickly became a national force.
The movement grabbed headlines in 1973 when it took over the village of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation, leading to a 71-day standoff with federal agents. Tensions between the movement and the government remained high for years.
On June 26, 1975, agents came to Pine Ridge to serve arrest warrants amid battles over Native treaty rights and self-determination.
After being injured in a shootout, agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams were shot in the head at close range, FBI has said. Also killed in the shootout was American Indian Movement member Joseph Stuntz.
Two other movement members, Robert Robideau and Dino Butler, were acquitted of killing Coler and Williams.
After fleeing to Canada and being extradited to the United States, Peltier was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced in 1977 to life in prison, despite defense claims that evidence against him had been falsified.
The FBI, which has long opposed Peltier's release, released a letter Monday that then-Director Christoper Wray wrote to Biden earlier this month opposing a pardon or commutation for Peltier.
"Even though courts have repeatedly examined and exposed Peltier's claims as baseless, his sympathizers continue to wrongly promote him as a standard-bearer for legitimate grievances about the United States government's historical mistreatment of Native Americans," Wray said in the letter. "But the facts cannot — and must not — be ignored. Peltier is a ruthless murderer who has shown a complete lack of remorse for his many crimes."
