Just moments before leaving office, US President Joe Biden commuted the life sentence of indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, who was convicted in the 1975 murders of two FBI agents.
Peltier was denied parole as recently as July and was not eligible for parole until 2026. He was serving a life sentence for the death of agents during a standoff on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
He will be placed under house arrest, Biden said in a statement.
Biden set the presidential record for most individual pardons and commutations issued. On Friday, he announced that he would commute the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. He also generally forgave his son Hunter, who had been prosecuted for gun and tax offences.
On Monday, Biden also pardoned Gerald Lundergan, a Democratic politician from Kentucky who served in the state House of Representatives. He was convicted of illegal campaign contributions to his daughter’s unsuccessful campaign for the US Senate. Ernest William Cromartie, a former Columbia, South Carolina city councilman who was convicted of tax evasion, was also pardoned.
The struggle for Peltier’s freedom is intertwined with movements for indigenous rights. Almost half a century later, his name remains a rallying cry.
An enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, North Dakota, Peltier was active in the American Indian Movement, which began in the 1960s as a grassroots organization in Minneapolis that struggled with issues of police brutality and discrimination against Native Americans. It quickly became a national power.
The movement made 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 went to Pine Ridge to serve arrest warrants amid battles over treaty rights and self-determination.
After being wounded in the shootout, agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams were shot in the head at close range, the FBI said. American Indian Movement member Joseph Stuntz was also killed in the shooting.
Two other members of the movement, Robert Robideau and Dino Butler, were acquitted of the murders of 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 to life in prison in 1977, despite defense claims that the evidence against him had been tampered with.
Last year, the Assembly of First Nations revoked Peltier’s 37-year endorsement, citing his alleged role in the interrogation of slain activist Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, a Mi’kmaw woman from Nova Scotia.
