Biden commutes sentence of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, convicted of 1975 killing of FBI agent

Only a few minutes left before his arrival ResignIn 1975, President Joe Biden commuted the life sentence of Leonard Peltier, an Indigenous activist convicted of the 1975 killings of two FBI agents.

Peltier is parole denied As recently as July this year, he was not eligible for parole again until 2026. He is serving a life sentence for killing agents during a standoff on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Biden said in a statement that he would transition to home confinement.

“President Biden has taken a huge step toward healing and reconciliation with this country's Native Americans,” Pelletier's former attorney Kevin Sharp said in a statement Monday. “People have spent nearly 50 years taking a step toward healing and reconciliation with Native Americans in this country.” It took years to acknowledge that Leonard Peltier's conviction and continued incarceration were unjust, but with the mercy of the President, Leonard was finally able to return to his reservation and live out the rest of his life. “

Sharp, the former chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, represented Peltier for five years and filed clemency petitions on his behalf in 2019 and 2021, which did not change Peltier's conviction .

this Fight for Peltier's freedom Entangled with Aboriginal rights movement. Nearly half a century later, his name remains a rallying cry.

Peltier is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, North Dakota, and is active in the American Indian Movement, a local organization in Minneapolis that began in the 1960s to address police violence. and discrimination against Native Americans. It quickly became a national force.

The movement dominated headlines in 1973 when it occupied the Wounded Knee Village on the Pine Ridge Reservation, leading to a 71-day standoff with federal agents. Relations between the movement and the government have been tense for years.

On June 26, 1975, agents came to Pine Ridge to serve an arrest warrant amid the fight over Aboriginal treaty rights and self-determination.

The FBI said agents Jack Kohler and Ronald Williams were shot in the head at close range after being wounded in a shootout. Joseph Stutz, a member of the American Indian Movement, was also killed in the shootout.

Two other Movement members, Robert Robidoux and Dino Butler, were acquitted of the killings of Kohler and Williams.

After fleeing to Canada and extradited to the United States, Peltier was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in 1977, despite the defense claiming that the evidence against him was fabricated.

FBI Long-standing opposition to Peltier's releaseA letter released Monday that then-director Christopher Wray wrote to Biden earlier this month opposed pardoning or commuting Peltier's sentence.

“While courts have repeatedly reviewed and exposed Peltier's claims as baseless, his sympathizers continue to falsely promote him as a standard-bearer for legitimate grievances against the U.S. government's historic mistreatment of Native Americans,” Wray said in the letter. “But the facts cannot – and must not – be ignored. Peltier was a brutal murderer who showed no remorse for his many crimes.”