Native American activist Leonard Peltier was released from the Coleman federal penitentiary in Sumter County after serving nearly 50 years in connection with the slayings of two FBI agents on a South Dakota reservation.
In St. Petersburg, his supporters on Tuesday hailed a man they say was a political prisoner who was wrongly convicted because he fought for tribal rights as a member of the American Indian Movement.
Peltier's life sentence was commuted by President Joe Biden on Jan. 20, the last day of his presidency. Biden did not pardon Peltier, but he will finish his sentence in home confinement. Peltier is now 80 with serious health issues.
Peltier has always said he didn't kill the FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams at the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975.
One of his attorneys, activist Chase Iron Eyes, said Peltier will be honored during a ceremony in his home on Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota.
"Leonard has done 50 years for us, and tomorrow he's going to be welcomed as a hero in his homeland," he said during a press conference at the Uhuru House in south St. Petersburg. "We are going to celebrate Leonard Peltier in the same way that we celebrate Nelson Mandela."
Prosecutors maintained at trial that Peltier shot both agents in the head at point-blank range. Peltier acknowledged being present and firing a gun at a distance, but he said he fired in self-defense and that his shots weren't the ones that killed the agents.
Former FBI director Christopher Wray called Peltier "a remorseless killer" in a private letter to Biden obtained by The Associated Press.
Leonard Peltier has made it to North Dakota! The temperatures are bitter cold today, but our hearts and spirits are on FIRE for our Elder and Leksi (Uncle) Leonard. ❤️🔥
— NDN Collective (@ndncollective) February 18, 2025
Read our press release for more about Leonard's welcome home event tomorrow https://t.co/BkDd57x0tu pic.twitter.com/x6tDqjjXHW
But Peltier's lead attorney, Jenipher Jones, said prosecutors were never able to prove that. She lauded his release as a humanitarian gesture.
"It's a step in the right direction, one which ensures dignity for Leonard, something which has long been denied him legally, medically and socially, but will now be restored," she said.
"In my view, political prisoners are political prisoners because their political positions and activities are directly at odds with the stated and unstated goals of the state itself ─ not a party, not a committee, not a subcommittee ─ and that is why a commutation has evaded Leonard, no matter which party has been in office over the decades."
Co-counsel Moira Meltzer-Cohen said the commutation has been a long time coming.
"What brought us to this day was five decades of global struggle," she said. "All of the people doing absolutely everything they could do large and small from the legal to the political to the cultural arenas."
A prison official said Peltier left the penitentiary in an SUV on Tuesday. He didn’t stop to speak with reporters or the roughly two dozen people who gathered outside the gates to celebrate his release.
Peltier, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, arrived in North Dakota by plane later in the day.
The American Indian Movement formed in the 1960s and fought for Native American treaty rights and tribal self-determination.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
