‘Show Mercy’: Sen. Brian Schatz Urges Joe Biden To Free Leonard Peltier In Final Days

WASHINGTON — Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) on Wednesday urged President Joe Biden to use his final days in office to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier, a Native American rights activist who has been in prison for nearly 50 years despite a deeply flawed trial and pleas for his release from human rights leaders, legal experts and even some of the people who helped put him in prison in the first place.

“As President Biden considers candidates for clemency in the final weeks of his term, the Native American activist Leonard Peltier is among those who deserve grace and mercy,” Schatz, who chairs the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, said on the Senate floor.

“If there was ever a case that merited compassionate release, Leonard Peltier’s is it,” he said. “This is exactly what that awesome presidential power is for: to right a historic wrong — and if not that, then just to show mercy and let an old man die with his family.”

Peltier was accused of murdering two FBI agents in a 1975 shoot-out on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. But his trial was rife with misconduct: The FBI threatened and coerced witnesses into lying. Federal prosecutors hid evidence that exonerated Peltier. A juror admitted on the second day of the trial that she had “prejudice against Indians,” but she was kept on anyway.

The government’s case fell apart after these revelations, so it abruptly revised its charges against Peltier to aiding and abetting whoever did kill the agents, based entirely on the idea that he was one of dozens of people present when the shootout took place.

The FBI and U.S. attorney’s office later admitted they never did figure out who killed the agents. There was never evidence that Peltier committed a crime.

“One witness whose statements were used at trial said she was told to lie and say that she was in a relationship with Peltier and that she had witnessed him shoot the agents,” Schatz said during his remarks. “She later recanted that statement, saying, ‘I was forced into this, and I feel very awful. I just wish that Leonard Peltier will get out of prison.’”

The Democratic senator also cited remarks from the U.S. attorney who tried Peltier’s case, James Reynolds, who later said he doubted the case against Peltier would hold up in any court today. Reynolds personally wrote to Biden in 2021 appealing to him to release Peltier.

“I write today from a position rare for a former prosecutor: to beseech you to commute the sentence of a man who I helped put behind bars,” Reynolds said in his letter. “With time, and the benefit of hindsight, I have realized that the prosecution and continued incarceration of Mr. Peltier was and is unjust. We were not able to prove that Mr. Peltier personally committed any offense on the Pine Ridge Reservation.”

Peltier, now 80, has maintained his innocence the entire time he’s been in prison, which has almost certainly resulted in him being denied parole.

He has serious health issues, including diabetes, which sent him to the hospital in July after he developed “open wounds and tissue death on his toes and feet.” He was hospitalized again in October. He currently uses a walker to get around and is at least partially blind.

The main reason he’s still in prison is because of staunch opposition to his release from the FBI. But the bureau’s stated reasons for opposing Peltier’s clemency are full of holes, outdated and remarkably easy to disprove.

“The FBI remains resolute against the commutation of Leonard Peltier’s sentence for murdering FBI Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams at South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975,” the bureau asserted to HuffPost in a 2022 statement. “We must never forget or put aside that Peltier intentionally and mercilessly murdered these two young men and has never expressed remorse for his ruthless actions.”

The FBI has never publicly addressed the key context of that 1975 shootout, either: The bureau itself was intentionally fueling tensions on that reservation as part of a covert campaign to suppress the activities of the American Indian Movement, or AIM, a grassroots movement for Indigenous rights. Peltier was an active AIM member and an FBI target.

With weeks left in his presidency, Biden has the authority to unilaterally grant compassionate release to Peltier. Presidents typically announce batches of pardons late in the year, and particularly at the ends of their terms.

In Peltier’s case, Biden could avoid some controversy by simply commuting his sentence versus granting a pardon, which inherently suggests the government is acknowledging it did something wrong. Commuting Peltier’s sentence would just mean his prison time is over.

Calls on Biden to release Peltier have intensified since the president unexpectedly pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, on Sunday.

“It’s less about the fact that the President pardoned his son and more about the fact that he’s only really pardoning his son when there are, in fact, many people, including Leonard Peltier, as well as several other cases of many Americans who are on death row, who should be taken off death row, and who are facing the end of their lives if this president does not act,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said Tuesday.

A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on whether Biden is considering granting clemency to Peltier.