Native American Activist Leonard Peltier Released From Prison
The New York Times
Mr. Peltier was convicted in the killing of two F.B.I. agents. An order from former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will allow him to serve his remaining time under home confinement.
Leonard Peltier, a Native American rights activist held for nearly half a century for the killing of two F.B.I. agents, was released from a federal prison in Central Florida on Tuesday morning.
Mr. Peltier, 80, will serve the remainder of his two life sentences in home confinement in North Dakota, where he is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa.
The commutation of Mr. Peltier’s sentence was one of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s final acts before leaving office. Those urging clemency for Mr. Peltier, who is in poor health and partially blind, included Nobel Peace laureates; former law enforcement officials, including one of the lead prosecutors on the case; human rights organizations; and celebrities like Steven Van Zandt, the guitarist for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band.
F.B.I. agents including Christopher Wray, the former director of the agency, strongly opposed clemency for Mr. Peltier, saying that it was a betrayal of the fallen agents, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams. Mr. Wray called Mr. Peltier “a remorseless killer.”
At a news conference on Tuesday afternoon, lawyers for Mr. Peltier, who has maintained his innocence, said that he should not be subjected even to house arrest. “We still have work to do,” his lead lawyer, Jenipher Jones, said. “It is our proposition that any detention of Leonard is unlawful.”
Though Native Americans have not been unanimous in their support for Mr. Peltier, the celebratory news conference held him up as a revered figure who had been unjustly imprisoned. “Leonard did 50 years for us, and tomorrow we are going to welcome him as a hero in our homeland,” said Chase Iron Eyes, a Native American civil rights lawyer.
