Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist who has always remained innocent in the murder of two FBI agents 50 years ago, has been called into a federal prison in Florida after then-President Joe Biden passed two life sentences. He was released on Tuesday morning.
The act of tolerance allows Peltier, who is 80 years old and has been de-healthless for many years, and can serve the rest of his day in family confinement.
Peltier has been transported to his birthplace in North Dakota. There, he is a citizen of Chippewa’s Turtle Mountain Band and is welcomed with the celebration of “reuniting with his home community and returning to life among his people.” The Indigenous-led advocacy organization said in a statement.
“We’ve committed to the free Leonard Peltier and brought him back to his hometown, which is what we’re doing,” said Nick Thilsen, founder of the organization. I said that.
The Federal Prisons Bureau declined to comment before Peltier’s release, citing reasons for security and privacy and discussing the conditions for his confinement. BOPs generally require individuals released to home confinement to be tracked via electronic surveillance and must remain at home if they are not involved in approved activities, and by Halfway House Services He said progress could be reviewed.
The scope of the rules regarding Peltier was still settled, but his age and health should be considered, said Jennifer Jones, the lead lawyer in his case.
She added that she will see a doctor on his release when he is suffering from illnesses including diabetes, high blood pressure and partial blindness from a stroke.
“He has been subjected to medical negligence for nearly 50 years,” Jones said. His release “gives him a greater ability to engage life, a humane presence, and his culture, his religious practices and his sacred practices.”
For decades, the Peltier case has gained prominent support from international human rights groups, including Coretta Scott King, and civil rights icons. Religious leaders such as Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama. Congressional lawmakers and celebrities.
But Biden’s decision, which came on his final day in office, was also criticized by law enforcement, who said that Peltier had not made the deaths of FBI agents Jack Coller and Ron Williams.
“President, I will urge you on the most powerful conditions possible. Don’t forgive Leonard Peltier or shorten his writing,” then FBI director Christopher Ray said in early January. I wrote to Biden because I considered whether to grant tolerance.
Ray also objected to Peltier’s request during last year’s hearing and was announced on parole. The bid was denied.
A nonprofit group representing FBI agents reaffirmed its criticism of Peltier’s release on Tuesday. Koller’s family previously said that “after years of fighting to continue to incarcerate Peltier, he is frustrated and very angry.”
Koller, 28, and Williams, 27, were murdered in June 1975 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. In the FBI investigation file.
Peltier was a member of the American Indian Movement, a grassroots activist organization that began in Minneapolis in the 1960s, and challenged police brutality and suppressed Indigenous rights. He was in Pine Ridge after a protest that was pulled out in a South Dakota injured knee two years ago. Two activists were killed.
On the day Coler and Williams arrived at Pine Ridge, they radioed that they fired in a 10-minute shootout, the FBI said. Both men were fatally shot at close range.
Investigators say Peltier was identified as the only person in possession of an AR-15 rifle that could fire the type of bullet that killed the agent.
But dozens of people were involved in the shootout. At the trial, two co-defendants were acquitted after they alleged themselves in self-defense. When Peltier was separately tried in 1977, no witnesses could identify him as being presented with the shooter, and at the time, the federal government had a fatal bullet that was not known to his defense at the time. Peltier filed the appeal, court documents withheld a ballistics report showing that it did not come from the weapon.
The FBI claimed that subsequent testing of the evidence of the shell casing was associated with the AR-15 with the extractor mark from the casing recovered from the trunk of Coler’s car.
Jimmy Carter was president when Peltier was found guilty in 1977 for the murder of an agent. Two years later, Peltier was involved in the escape from prison, where he was sentenced to five years in prison.
James Reynolds, a US lawyer whose office handled the prosecution and appeals in Peltier’s case, later became an advocate for his release, writing letters to various presidents, including Biden, and becoming lenient.
He took into account the suspicious evidence in such a chaotic environment when the crime occurred, the innocence of Peltier’s co-defendants in their own trial, and the historical abuse of Native Americans by the federal government. , said he changed his opinion.
“In my opinion, this case is a tremendous miscarriage of justice,” Reynolds, appointed by Carter, said in a telephone interview. “I realized to Leonard that what they did wasn’t right. It was enough.”
Peltier told NBC News in 2022 that he wanted to clear his name in a new trial.
Chief attorney Jones said he believes “Leonard’s detention is illegal” and will advance the appeal in his case.
Peltier’s eldest son, Chauncy Peltier, was among those waiting for official words that he had been out of prison on Tuesday.
Chauncey Peltier, who lives in Oregon, said he will be reuniting with his father in North Dakota next month after seeing him last during his 2015 prison visit.
He said he was grateful to those who worked behind the scenes seeking his father’s release and ultimately thanked Biden for intervening.
“He fixed the injustice,” Chauncy Peltier said. “He doesn’t know how much this means to his family.”
