WASHINGTON — Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) on Wednesday urged President Joe Biden to make use of his ultimate days in workplace to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier, a Native American rights activist who has been in jail for almost 50 years regardless of a deeply flawed trial and pleas for his launch from human rights leaders, authorized specialists and even among the individuals who helped put him in jail within 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, stated on the Senate flooring.
“If there was ever a case that merited compassionate release, Leonard Peltier’s is it,” he stated. “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 brokers in a 1975 shoot-out on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. However his trial was rife with misconduct: The FBI threatened and coerced witnesses into mendacity. Federal prosecutors hid proof that exonerated Peltier. A juror admitted on the second day of the trial that she had “prejudice against Indians,” however she was stored on anyway.
The federal government’s case fell aside after these revelations, so it abruptly revised its prices in opposition to Peltier to aiding and abetting whoever did kill the brokers, based mostly totally on the concept he was considered one of dozens of individuals current when the shootout came about.
The FBI and U.S. legal professional’s workplace later admitted they by no means did work out who killed the brokers. There was by no means proof that Peltier dedicated a criminal offense.
“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 stated throughout 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 additionally cited remarks from the U.S. legal professional who tried Peltier’s case, James Reynolds, who later stated he doubted the case in opposition to Peltier would maintain up in any court docket at present. Reynolds personally wrote to Biden in 2021 interesting to him to launch 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 stated 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 all the time he’s been in jail, which has nearly definitely resulted in him being denied parole.
He has critical well being points, together with diabetes, which despatched him to the hospital in July after he developed “open wounds and tissue death on his toes and feet.” He was hospitalized once more in October. He presently makes use of a walker to get round and is at the least partially blind.
The primary purpose he’s nonetheless in jail is due to staunch opposition to his launch from the FBI. However the bureau’s said causes for opposing Peltier’s clemency are filled with holes, outdated and remarkably straightforward 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 assertion. “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 by no means publicly addressed the important thing context of that 1975 shootout, both: The bureau itself was deliberately fueling tensions on that reservation as a part of a covert marketing campaign to suppress the actions of the American Indian Motion, or AIM, a grassroots motion for Indigenous rights. Peltier was an lively AIM member and an FBI goal.
With weeks left in his presidency, Biden has the authority to unilaterally grant compassionate launch to Peltier. Presidents sometimes announce batches of pardons late within the yr, and notably on the ends of their phrases.
In Peltier’s case, Biden may keep away from some controversy by merely commuting his sentence versus granting a pardon, which inherently suggests the federal government is acknowledging it did one thing flawed. Commuting Peltier’s sentence would simply imply his jail time is over.
Calls on Biden to launch Peltier have intensified because 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.) stated Tuesday.
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A White Home spokesman didn’t reply to a request for touch upon whether or not Biden is contemplating granting clemency to Peltier.
