(CNN) ā In one of his last acts before leaving office, former commuted the life sentence of , convicted in the 1975 killings of two FBI agents.
Peltier, 80, will serve the remainder of his sentence at home.
āItās finally over ā Iām going home,ā Peltier said shared by NDN Collective, an Indigenous rights group in South Dakota. āI want to show the world Iām a good person with a good heart. I want to help the people, just like my grandmother taught me.ā
Peltier was last year. He has spent almost 50 years ā more than half of his life ā in federal prison.
A statement from Bidenās office noted Peltierās āsevere health ailmentsā as well as āhis close ties to and leadership in the Native American community.ā The commutation does not pardon him for his crimes, his office said.
Peltier consistently maintained his innocence in the agentsā shooting deaths. Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, were killed in a shootout June 26, 1975, while searching for a robbery suspect on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
The agents went to the reservation to serve arrest warrants, the AP reported, and were injured in the shootout and later shot in the head, the FBI has said.
In 1977, Peltier was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
āI didnāt kill those agents, I didnāt see who killed those agents, and if I did know, Iām not telling. But I donāt know. Thatās the point,ā Peltier told former CNN correspondent Mark Potter in 1999.
Peltier said he fired shots during the gun battle but āI know I didnāt hit them. I know I didnāt.ā
The FBI Agents Association said in a Monday statement they were āoutragedā by the commutation of Peltierās sentence and described him as āa convicted cop killer responsible for the brutal murdersā of Coler and Williams.
The commutation is a ācruel betrayal to the families and colleagues of these fallen Agents and is a slap in the face of law enforcement,ā the association said.
Peltier is currently incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary Coleman I in Sumterville, Florida. Peltierās goes into effect on February 18.
The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians has a furnished home waiting for Peltierās arrival, Kevin Sharp, a retired federal judge and attorney who represented Peltier in his bids for clemency, told CNN.
āLeonard has always wanted to live out the rest of his life at home, at Turtle Mountain,ā Sharp said. āHe will now get to do that, spending that time with his kids and grandkids and fellow members of his tribe.ā
He embodies āsystemic injusticesā faced by Indigenous people
Human and Indigenous rights groups, many of which had supported Peltierās repeated bids for clemency, applauded Bidenās actions.
The National Congress of American Indians celebrated the commutation in a statement, saying the case āhas long symbolized the systemic injustices faced by Indigenous Peoples.ā
Paul OāBrien, the executive director of Amnesty International USA, said in a statement Biden was right to commute Peltierās sentence āgiven the serious human rights concerns about the fairness of his trial.ā
Sens. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, and Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, were who asked Biden to commute Peltierās sentence in 2023. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had called for his release in 2022.
James Reynold, the US attorney whose office prosecuted Peltier, for Peltier and called for clemency in a 2021 letter to Biden. He wrote that Peltierās conviction and incarceration were ātestament to a time and a system of justice that no longer has a place in our society.ā
Advocates have also noted Peltier attended one of the hundreds of US funded by the federal government to assimilate Indigenous children into White society in the 19th and 20th centuries.
In a first-person account published by , Peltier said he was forcibly taken from his grandmother to a North Dakota boarding school when he was 9 years old. He wrote the staff āmade it clear we were hatedā at the school.
NDN Collective previously described Peltier as āAmericaās longest serving Indigenous political prisoner.ā
How the Pine Ridge shootout unfolded
In the 1970s, Peltier was a leader of the American Indian Movement, which took over the village of Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge reservation, reported.
The takeover led to a 71-day standoff with federal agents and lasting tensions between the movement and the government. During the occupation, a US Marshal was shot, resulting in paralysis, and two Indigenous activists were shot and killed, P reported.
The says that Coler and Williams were at the Pine Ridge reservation searching for Jimmy Eagle, who had an outstanding federal warrant for robbery.
The agentsā radio transmissions indicate they stopped a red and white vehicle and then reported the occupants of the vehicle were preparing to shoot at them.
Other agents who arrived to respond also came under gunfire, the FBI said.
Coler and Williamsā bodies showed they were both injured by gunshots ā Coler in the arm, Williams in the foot ā before being shot in the head. The agentsā vehicles contained a total of 125 bullet holes, according to the FBI.
Joseph Stuntz, another member of the American Indian Movement, was also killed that day, . No one has been arrested or charged in his death.
Peltier previously told CNN he was in bed at camp when he heard gunshots.
āAll of a sudden, everybody said, āMan, weāre being attacked. Weāre being attacked,āā he told CNN in 1999. āSo I grabbed an old rifle and started running up to the house.ā
Peltier said he fired his gun after being fired upon. The FBI has said the agents were shot without provocation.
The government built its case on ballistics evidence and witness accounts from people who were on the periphery of the shootout, including Native Americans, but no one actually saw the killings.
Supporters of Peltier have said the evidence produced at trial was unreliable, while the FBI has categorically denied it fabricated evidence or coerced witnesses.
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