This morning, just moments before leaving office, President 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 in July and wasn’t eligible 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.
On Monday, Biden also pardoned Gerald Lundergan, a Democratic politician from Kentucky who served in the state House of Representatives. He was convicted of illegal campaign contributions to his daughter’s failed U.S. Senate campaign. Ernest William Cromartie, a former Columbia, South Carolina, city council member who was convicted of tax evasion, also was pardoned.
On June 26, 1975, agents went to Pine Ridge to serve arrest warrants amid battles over Native treaty rights and self-determination. After being injured in a shootout, agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams were shot in the head at close range, the FBI has said. Also killed in the shootout was American Indian Movement member Joseph Stuntz. Two other movement members, Robert Robideau and Dino Butler, were acquitted of killing Coler and Williams.
After fleeing to Canada and being extradited to the United States, Peltier was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced in 1977 to life in prison, despite defense claims that evidence against him had been falsified.
