Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier will return home a half century after he was imprisoned for the 1975 killings of two FBI agents. Outgoing President Biden commuted Peltier’s sentence Monday after decades of advocacy calling his imprisonment an example of the U.S. government’s mistreatment of Native Americans.
The White House said Peltier, now 80 and in declining health, will move to home confinement. The commutation is not a pardon for crimes committed, a decision some advocates welcomed because he has maintained his innocence. The commutation angered law enforcement officers who believe he is guilty, reports the Associated Press. The National Congress of American Indians celebrated the “historic” decision, saying the case “has long symbolized the systemic injustices faced by Indigenous Peoples.”
In a private letter to Biden, former FBI director Christopher Wray reiterated his position that “Peltier is a remorseless killer,” and urged the president not to act. “Granting Peltier any relief from his conviction or sentence is wholly unjustified and would be an affront to the rule of law,” Wray wrote. Peltier was active in the American Indian Movement, which has fought police brutality and discrimination against Native Americans since the 1960s. In 1973, the movement took over the village of Wounded Knee on Pine Ridge — the Oglala Lakota Nation’s reservation in South Dakota —starting a 71-day standoff with federal agents. Peltier has admitted he was firing during the June 26, 1975, confrontation with FBI agents who went to Pine Ridge to serve arrest warrants. Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams were shot in the head at close range. AIM member Joseph Stuntz also was killed. Peltier fled to Canada but was extradited to the U.S. and convicted on two counts of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1977, despite defense claims of falsified evidence. The Bureau of Prisons said Peltier was in the federal Coleman prison in Florida. Peltier’s lawyer said his release was tentatively set for Feb. 18.
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