Free Leonard Peltier
Sweet Jesus, It's Just Time
The recently pardoned Hunter Biden. Photo Credit: Center for Strategic & International Studies, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
President Biden should commute the prison sentence of Native American activist Leonard Peltier.
Tribal leaders from across the country yesterday made a last-minute plea to President Biden to commute the sentence and release the 80 year-old spend his remaining years with family.
Peltier is serving two life terms for the murder of FBI agents Ronald Williams and Jack Coler on June 26, 1975. The murder was brutal and it is indeed possible that Peltier was involved. In no way do I mean to diminish the horrific nature of the crime or the deep sense of loss experienced by their families and the FBI.
Peltier was active in the American Indian Movement (AIM) and in the occupation of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The conflict involved AIM’s resistance to the leadership of Richard Wilson, elected tribal leader. Wilson had organized a goon squad to protect himself and terrorize opponents.
In 1973, the FBI conducted a 71 day siege of Wounded Knee that was occupied by AIM activists. During the siege federal agents killed two Sioux men and there was ongoing federal violence against tribal members over the next two years.
Agents Williams and Coler were attempting to serve an arrest warrant, not against Peltier, when they were ambushed on the reservation and killed.
All of this to say, that this was an overheated moment in time, with violence on all sides, and mistakes and poor judgement across the board. While that doesn’t excuse the murder to two men who were only trying to do their job, it provides crucial context for what happened, over and above the disgraceful treatment of Native Americans throughout our history.
There continues to be questions about the evidence used to convict Peltier.
James Reynolds, the U.S. Attorney who convicted Peltier, wrote a letter asking for Biden to commute this sentence. Here is some of what Reynolds said:
President Joe Biden, I write today from a position rare for a former prosecutor, to beseech you to commute the sentence of a man who I helped to put behind bars. Leonard Peltier’s conviction and continued incarceration is a testament in a time and system of justice that no longer has a place in our society. We were not able to prove that Mr. Peltier personally committed any offense on the reservation. As a result to Mr. Peltier’s conviction, now arrest, is that he was guilty of a murder simply because he was present on the reservation that day. He has served time for more than 46 years on the hands of minimal evidence, a result I strongly doubt would be upheld in any court today. I believe that a grant of executive clemency would serve the best interest of justice and the best interest of our country.
Again, we don’t pretend to know if Peltier is innocent or guilty. We believe that legitimate questions have been raised about the evidence used to convict him. We know that presidents have pardoned very dubious characters because they had powerful political friends. We think of Hunter Biden, Marc Rich, and Trump’s disgraceful pardon of Charles Kushner, who is now slated to be our ambassador to France.
An act of mercy toward an old man in failing health, who was long ago caught up in an intemperate moment in American history, would be a small step to acknowledging our historic crimes against Native Americans.
President Biden, please commute this sentence.