Leonard Peltier Is Finally, Finally Free(ish)
He got last minute -- really last minute! -- clemency from Joe Biden.
Holy fuck. Holy, holy fuck.
In the absolute last minutes of his presidency, Joe Biden did something many of us have been begging him to do for four years — something we begged Obama to do, something we begged Bill Clinton to do. He granted clemency to political prisoner Leonard Peltier, an indigenous activist who has been imprisoned for 50 years for a crime he almost definitely did not commit and for which there is no evidence to prove he committed it.
It’s not great, it’s not perfect. It should be a pardon and it’s not. He should be fully freed and he’s being moved to home confinement, but at least he gets to be with his family, at least he gets to be home.
Peltier, a leader in the American Indian Movement (AIM) that just a few years prior had led the occupation of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, for 71 days demanding a renegotiation of contracts with the US government, was convicted of killing two FBI agents in 1975 during a shootout that involved some 40 people. Said FBI agents were there to arrest a man named Jimmy Eagle, who they had reason to believe had, uh, stolen some cowboy boots.
The only evidence against Peltier was that
He was physically there.
A ballistics expert said the bullets could have come from his gun.
A mentally challenged young woman named Myrtle Poor Bear signed affidavits saying she was Peltier’s girlfriend at the time and personally saw him shoot the agents in the head.
And not even that, really. The ballistics expert originally concluded, using an especially accurate test, that the bullets could not have come from Peltier’s gun (though of course the defense was not told this), but was then ordered to perform a less-accurate test that determined that they could have. Possibly. If you squint. Poor Bear would later recant, saying that she had been pressured by law enforcement to make that claim.
The trial itself was such a sham that both the judge and the prosecutor in the case have begged for Peltier to be released.
In the beginning of December, 34 Senators and members of Congress sent a letter also asking for a pardon for Peltier — Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Greg Casar (D-Texas), Jesús G. “Chuy” García (D-Ill.), Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Daniel Kildee (D-Mich.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Summer Lee (D-Ohio), Erica Lee Carter (D-Texas), Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-N.M.), Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), James McGovern (D-Mass.), Kevin Mullin (D-Calif.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), Andrea Salinas (D-Ore.), Janice Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii), and Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.), as well as US Senators Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Edward Markey (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Peter Welch (D- Vt.), and former US Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).
(Coincidentally, I think this might also be pretty close to a list of all of the US politicians I actually like.)
Overall, however, it’s been very hard to get many politicians to touch the situation with a ten-foot pole, not because it’s not very obvious that he is innocent, but because they don’t want to look like they love it when FBI agents get murdered.
Here is the statement from the White House:
The President is commuting the life sentence imposed on Leonard Peltier so that he serves the remainder of his sentence in home confinement. He is now 80 years old, suffers from severe health ailments, and has spent the majority of his life (nearly half a century) in prison. This commutation will enable Mr. Peltier to spend his remaining days in home confinement but will not pardon him for his underlying crimes.
Mr. Peltier is a Native American activist who is currently serving life in prison for killing two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and escaping from federal prison. Tribal Nations, Nobel Peace laureates, former law enforcement officials (including the former U.S. Attorney whose office oversaw Mr. Peltier’s prosecution and appeal), dozens of lawmakers, and human rights organizations strongly support granting Mr. Peltier clemency, citing his advanced age, illnesses, his close ties to and leadership in the Native American community, and the substantial length of time he has already spent in prison.
Again, it’s disappointing that there is not even a mention of the fact that people believe he is innocent, but it may simply be that this was the best he felt he could do, for whatever reason.
As much as we’d all love a pardon or a full commutation (with the apology of the US government), this is better than getting nothing, it’s better than Peltier dying in prison, which is certainly what many of us assumed was going to happen. He will be out of prison, he will be with his family, and that is a gift.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
OT: ALL of the January 6 defendents, including those who INJURED police officers, have been pardoned by the Depraved Despot.
I need to go smash something. FUCK,
I don’t want to hear anymore about how “unpopular” Biden is. I get it, his poll numbers are low.
But those poll numbers are not a result of actual things he did. They are a result of a targeted media agenda to oust him.
And furthermore, Trump was so unpopular we voted him out and now he’s come back to haunt us.
We don’t have to accept the media’s framing of reality is what I’m saying. We can write our own narrative.