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Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), ranking member of the Chamber Natural Resources Commissionand Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, led 33 members of Congress on Friday in a letter asking President Biden forgive Leonard Peltier – a controversial Native American activist convicted of murder two FBI agents.
The letter cites Peltier’s age and health problems, as well as the Denial by the US Parole Commission of his application in July, which likely marked his last chance at parole. In addition to the 33 current senators and representatives, it is signed by former Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.).
“These recent denials mean that only you have the unique ability to grant him clemency and rectify this grave injustice that has long worried human rights defenders and indigenous peoples around the world,” the group wrote.
Peltier participated in the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the 1970s, which led him to travel to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota amid tensions between the tribal chairman and a traditionalist faction of the Lakota nation. Officers Ronald Arthur Williams and Jack Ross Coler were killed in a shootout on the reservation, and Peltier was convicted and sentenced to two life sentences in 1977.
The trial has long been criticized as unfair by Peltier’s lawyers, citing the fact that a key prosecution witness later recanted, as well as two other men accused of the murders but later acquitted based on se in evidence that was not allowed in Peltier’s trial. .
Pope Francis, the late Nelson Mandela and James Reynolds, the prosecutor in the case, have lobbied for clemency or forgiveness.
The FBI has consistently and adamantly opposed clemency or release for Peltier, with outgoing Director Christopher Wray called him a “relentless killer”.
Schatz previously called for Biden to grant clemency to Peltier in the Senate earlier this month.
Friday’s letter comes on the heels of the president forgive or move on the convictions of more than 1,500 people amidst the pressure following a sorry controversial of his son Hunter on federal taxes and gun crimes. All 39 pardon recipients were previously convicted of nonviolent crimes.
The group of lawmakers also appealed Biden’s record Native American issueswhich includes the appointment of Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, who hailed him as the best president of autochthonous subjects of his life at an event on Monday.
In the same act, Biden designated national monument at the former site of the Carlisle Industrial School, the first of several boarding schools where Native American children were housed in an attempt to forcibly assimilate them into American culture.
