With minutes left in his presidency, President Joe Biden commuted the life sentence of indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, who was convicted in the 1975 killings of two FBI agents.
Peltier was denied parole as recently as July and wasn’t eligible for parole again until 2026. He was serving life in prison for the deaths of the agents during a standoff on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
He will transition to home confinement, Biden said in a statement.
“President Biden took an enormous step toward healing and reconciliation with the Native American people in this country,” Peltier’s former attorney Kevin Sharp said in a statement Monday. “It took nearly 50 years to acknowledge the injustice of Leonard Peltier’s conviction and continued incarceration, but with the president’s act of mercy Leonard can finally return to his reservation and live out his remaining days.”
