Leonard Peltier Freed Biden Commutes Native American Activist’s Life Sentence

Leonard Peltier is a Native American activist who has always said he is innocent of killing two FBI agents 50 years ago. On Tuesday, he went back to his home in North Dakota just hours after being freed from a federal jail in Florida after President Joe Biden commuted his two life sentences.

Peltier, who is 80 years old and has been getting worse for years, can spend the rest of his life in prison at home thanks to the act of mercy.

Peltier was flown to the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation by jet. He will be greeted with celebrations so that he can “reconnect with his home community and adjust back into life among his people,” according to a statement from the NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led campaign group.

Nick Tilsen, the head of the group, said, “We made a promise to free Leonard Peltier and bring him back to his home countries. This is us keeping that promise.”

The federal Bureau of Prisons wouldn’t say anything about Peltier’s conditions of confinement before he was released, claiming security and privacy concerns. The BOP said that people who are released to home confinement must be electronically monitored, must stay in their homes when they aren’t doing allowed activities, and may have their progress looked at by halfway house services.

The rules for Peltier were still being worked out, but his age and health should be taken into account, said Jenipher Jones, who is the lead lawyer in his case.

She also said that he would be getting medical care when he got out because he has a lot of health problems, like diabetes, high blood pressure, and partial blindness from a stroke.

“He’s been subjected to medical negligence for nearly 50 years,” he said. He is free “gives him a chance at a life, at a humane existence, and the ability to more acutely engage with his culture, with his religious practices and with his sacred practices.”

Over the years, Peltier’s case has gotten a lot of attention from important people in the world of human rights and civil rights, like Coretta Scott King; religious leaders, like Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama; politicians in Congress; and famous people.

But law enforcement groups also didn’t like Biden’s choice, which came on his last day in office. They said Peltier wasn’t sorry for killing FBI agents Jack Coler and Ron Williams.

Christopher Wray, who was FBI director at the time, wrote to Biden in early January, “Mr. President, I urge you in the strongest terms possible: Do not pardon Leonard Peltier or cut his sentence short.” This was written while the president was thinking about whether to grant clemency.

During a hearing last year, Wray also spoke out against Peltier’s desire to be released on parole. The bid was turned down.

On Tuesday, a non-profit group that represents FBI agents said again that they did not agree with Peltier’s freedom. Coler’s family had said before that they were “frustrated and very angry after years of fighting to keep Peltier in jail.”

The FBI’s investigative files show that Coler, 28, and Williams, 27, were killed in June 1975 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. They were trying to arrest a guy on a federal warrant for stealing a pair of cowboy boots.

Peltier was a part of the American Indian Movement, a group of citizen activists that began in Minneapolis in the 1960s to fight police abuse and the violation of Indigenous rights. He was at Pine Ridge after a long protest in Wounded Knee, South Dakota, two years before. There, armed AIM supporters and Oglala Sioux tribal members had taken over the town and fought with federal police. There were two deaths of campaigners.

FBI says that Coler and Williams radioed that they had been shot at and were in a 10-minute fight on the day they got to Pine Ridge. Both men were killed by close-range shots.

According to investigators, Peltier was the only person on the tribe who had an AR-15 rifle that could fire the type of bullet that killed the agents.

But dozens of people were involved in the gunfight. Two co-defendants were found not guilty at their trial because they said they were acting in self-defense. Peltier was tried separately in 1977, but there were no witnesses who could prove he was the shooter. Also, Peltier’s defense lawyers didn’t know at the time that the federal government had withheld a ballistics report that showed the fatal bullets didn’t come from his gun, according to court documents he filed on appeal.

After further tests, the FBI said that extractor marks found on a shell casing found in the trunk of Coler’s car did match the AR-15 that was linked to Peltier.

In 1977, Peltier was found guilty of killing the officers in a trial that happened while Jimmy Carter was president. Two years later, Peltier helped break out of prison, which got him another five years in jail.

James Reynolds was Peltier’s U.S. attorney and oversaw both the conviction and the appeal of his case. He later pushed for his release and wrote to several presidents, including Biden, asking them to pardon him.

He said he changed his mind after thinking about the confusing proof that was around at the time of the crime, the fact that Peltier’s co-defendants were found not guilty in their own trial, and how the federal government has historically treated Native Americans badly.

Reynolds, who was hired by Carter, said in a phone interview, “I think the case is just a huge miscarriage of justice.” “I was aware that what they did to Leonard was wrong. “That was enough.”

He told NBC News in 2022 that he wanted a new hearing to clear his name.

As Jones, the main lawyer, put it, “any detention of Leonard is unlawful,” and she said she would file appeals in his case.

Tuesday, Chauncey Peltier, Peltier’s oldest son, was one of the people waiting to hear for sure that he was free from jail.

Chauncey Peltier, who lives in Oregon, said he wants to see his father again next month in North Dakota. The last time he saw him was in 2015, when he went to see him in jail.

He told them he was thankful for everyone who worked behind the scenes to get his dad released, especially Biden for stepping in.

“He made things right,” Chauncey Peltier said. “He doesn’t know how much this has meant to the family.”