As one of his last official acts, President Joe Biden on Monday commuted the life sentence of Leonard Peltier, 80, allowing the American Indian Movement member to serve the rest of his sentence in home confinement.
Biden commutes Leonard Peltier’s sentence to home confinement in 1975 killing of FBI agents
The American Indian Movement member has maintained his innocence during nearly 50 years in prison.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
January 20, 2025 at 8:38PM
Peltier was convicted of murdering two FBI agents during a 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He has maintained his innocence during his nearly 50 years in prison.
In a statement announcing the commutation, Biden said that Peltier suffers from serious health problems and has spent most of his life in prison. He will be transferred to home confinement Feb. 18 and has not been pardoned for his crimes.
“It’s finally over — I’m going home,” Peltier said after learning of the commutation, according to a social media post from the NDN Collective, an Indigenous rights group. “I want to show the world I’m a good person with a good heart. I want to help the people, just like my grandmother taught me.”
Peltier is expected to return to his birthplace, the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation near Belcourt, N.D., where a home is waiting for him to spend time with his children and grandchildren. He’ll have 72 hours after his release to report to local probation officials.
Nick Tilsen, NDN Collective founder and CEO, said in a statement that Peltier’s release: “is the result of 50 years of intergenerational resistance, organizing, and advocacy. 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.”
Lisa Bellanger, who grew up in the American Indian Movement and is now one of its leaders, said Peltier’s imprisonment was part of an longstanding government effort to discredit their organization, which was founded in Minneapolis in 1968.
“Today will go down in history as one of the greatest days in Indian country,” Bellanger said. “I’m very appreciative. We are very appreciative of his ability to come home. He has a family he has not met. We celebrate his release from the prison walls.”
Last summer, Peltier’s latest request for parole was denied after a 6-½-hour hearing at the Coleman I Penitentiary, part of a federal prison complex northwest of Orlando, Fla. His attorney, Kevin Sharp, has called Peltier’s conviction based on “a seriously flawed set of facts,” and “tainted with investigation and prosecutorial misconduct.”
Sharp said he was nervous Monday, but held out hope Peltier would receive clemency. The commutation was signed by Biden in the last hours of his presidency.
“It was a combination of excitement and relief,” Sharp said. “I thought it was coming, but you wait until there are just a few minutes left in the administration. You start to worry.”
FBI Director Christopher Wray opposed Peltier’s past request for release, writing to the parole commission there was “overwhelming and unassailable evidence of his guilt, the brutality of his crimes, and his persistent refusal to accept responsibility.”
Yet, Peltier’s role in the deaths of Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams has long been disputed by a vast number of supporters who feel he is a political prisoner. Calls for Peltier’s release received international backing, including from Amnesty International and the late South African leader Nelson Mandela.
In a statement, Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA, praised Biden’s decision to commute Peltier’s sentence “given the serious human rights concerns about the fairness of his trial.”
In 1975, Coler and Williams were shot while driving separate vehicles pursuing a robbery suspect on the Pine Ridge Reservation. A gunman then shot the agents at close range, killing them.
The FBI said Peltier was the shooter and he was convicted in 1977 and given two life sentences. His supporters have argued that prosecutors only showed he was present at the shootout and not that he fired the fatal shots.
Sharp said the government withheld exculpatory evidence to tie a shell casing at the scene of the slayings to a weapon owned by Peltier.
“If that happened today, he does not get convicted. The law would not allow for what they did, this trampled constitution,” he said. “This trial was a sham.”
Sharp added that it was vital to understand the U.S. government’s history of broken treaties and poor treatment of Indigenous people that proceeded the shootout at Pine Ridge.
Previously, in 1973, members of the American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee, S.D. in a historic standoff with federal authorities over Indian rights issues. In 1974, two AIM leaders, Dennis Banks and Russell Means, went on trial in St. Paul, but a federal judge dismissed the charges, citing misconduct.
The outgoing president issued a record number of pardons before leaving office Monday. Biden issued broad pardons to members of his family, including his son Hunter, and some public officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley and members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack to guard against political “revenge” by the Trump administration.
Randy Furst and Andy Mannix of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.
While the Minnesota Democrat didn’t vote for Trump, she called his inauguration to order as chair of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies.
