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Tuesday, January 21, 2025

‘It’s Finally Over, I’m Going Home’: Biden Grants Commutation

 

‘It’s Finally Over, I’m Going Home’: Biden Grants Commutation—But No Pardon—for Peltier

 January 20, 2025 

Leonard Peltier (Flickr)

By Brett Wilkins / Common Dreams

Just minutes before leaving office, Joe Biden on Monday commuted the life prison sentence of Leonard Peltier, the elderly American Indian Movement activist who supporters say was framed for the murder of two federal agents during a 1975 reservation shootout.

“It’s finally over, I’m going home,” Peltier, who is 80 years old, said in a statement released by the Indigenous-led activist group NDN Collective. “I want to show the world I’m a good person with a good heart. I want to help the people, just like my grandmother taught me.”

While not the full pardon for which he and his defenders have long fought, the outgoing Democratic president’s commutation will allow Peltier—who has been imprisoned for nearly a half-century—to “spend his remaining days in home confinement,” according to Biden’s statement, which was no longer posted on the White House website after Republican President Donald Trump took office Monday afternoon. 

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