SUMTERVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Native American activist Leonard Peltier was released from a Florida prison on Tuesday, weeks after then-President Joe Biden angered law enforcement officials by commuting his life sentence to home confinement in the 1975 killings of two FBI agents.
Peltier, 80, left Coleman penitentiary in an SUV, according to a prison official. He didn’t stop to speak with reporters or the roughly two dozen supporters who gathered outside the gates to celebrate his release.
Peltier, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in North Dakota, was headed back to his reservation, where family and friends will celebrate his release with him on Wednesday and where the tribe arranged a house for him to live in while serving his home confinement.
Throughout his nearly half-century in prison, Peltier has maintained that he didn't murder FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams during a confrontation that day on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Native Americans widely believe he was a political prisoner who was wrongly convicted because he fought for tribal rights as a member of the American Indian Movement.
“He represents every person who’s been roughed up by a cop, profiled, had their children harassed at school,” said Nick Estes, a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe who advocated for Peltier’s release.
Biden did not pardon Peltier. But his Jan. 20 commutation of Peltier's sentence to home confinement, noting Peltier had spent most of his life behind bars and was in poor health, prompted criticism from those who believe Peltier is guilty. Among them is former FBI Director Christopher Wray, who called Peltier “a remorseless killer” in a private letter to Biden obtained by The Associated Press.
One of his attorneys, Jenipher Jones, said Peltier was looking forward to going home.
“We’re so excited for this moment,” Jones said before his release. “He is in good spirits. He has the soul of a warrior.”
His supporters outside the prison, including some who waved flags saying “Free Leonard Peltier," were elated.
“We never thought he would get out,” said Ray St. Clair, a member of the White Earth Band of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe who traveled to Florida to be there for Peltier's release. “It shows you should never give up hope. We can take this repairing the damage that was done. This is a start.”
Peltier was active in AIM, which formed in the 1960s and fought for Native American treaty rights and tribal self-determination.
Peltier's conviction stemmed from a 1975 confrontation on the in Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in which the two FBI agents were killed. According to the FBI, Coler and Williams were there to serve arrest warrants for robbery and assault with a dangerous weapon.
Prosecutors maintained at trial that Peltier shot both agents in the head at point-blank range. Peltier acknowledged being present and firing a gun at a distance, but he said he fired in self-defense and that his shots weren't the ones that killed the agents. A woman who claimed to have seen Peltier shoot the agents later recanted her testimony, saying it had been coerced.
He was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and given two consecutive life sentences.
Two other AIM members, Robert Robideau and Dino Butler, were acquitted on the grounds of self-defense.
Peltier was denied parole as recently as July and was not eligible to be considered for it again until 2026.
Generations of Indigenous activists and leaders lobbied multiple presidents to pardon Peltier. Former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and the first Native American to hold the secretary's position, praised Biden's decision.
As a young child, Peltier was taken from his family and sent to a boarding school. Thousands of Indigenous children over decades faced the same fate, and were in many cases subjected to systemic physical, psychological and sexual abuse.
“He hasn’t really had a home since he was taken away to boarding school,” said Nick Tilsen, who has been advocating for Peltier's release since he was a teen and is CEO of NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led advocacy group based in South Dakota. “So he is excited to be at home and paint and have grandkids running around.”
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Brewer reported from Norman, Oklahoma.
Graham Lee Brewer And Curt Anderson, The Associated Press
