A few hours before leaving the White House, Joe Biden granted the wish of Native American activist Leonard Peltier, 80, sentenced to life in 1977: to be able to end his days at home, near his family, in North Dakota.
According to a clemency decree taken on January 19, the Democratic president commuted the former rebel's sentence to house arrest from February 18. He will then leave his prison in Coleman, Florida, but he is not pardoned. Joe Biden, who is one of the presidents who has worked the most for Native American populations, was asked by 124 indigenous leaders to grant a pardon to a man who suffers from multiple health problems and whom Amnesty International described as “oldest political prisoner in the United States”. Bill Clinton refused this clemency measure in 2000. And despite appeals from international figures, including Pope Francis, Barack Obama also left the White House without granting him this favor which the police unions had always opposed.
A member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in North Dakota, Leonard Peltier was sentenced on April 18, 1977 to two life sentences for the assassination of two undercover FBI agents on June 26, 1975. during a shooting on the Pine Ridge Reservation (South Dakota). American Indian Movement (AIM) activist Leonard Peltier has never denied that he participated in the shooting, but he has always denied having executed the two police officers. However, the prosecution was never able to irrefutably establish his guilt.
In July 2024, he was once again refused parole by prison authorities. He deplored having never been detained less than 1,600 kilometers from his home. Signatories to an open letter to Joe Biden said his prolonged incarceration had become “a symbol for indigenous people of the systemic inequalities of criminal justice in the United States”.
