Schatz asks White House to grant clemency to 77-year-old incarcerated Native American rights activist

Government
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Leonard Peltier is a Native American activist who, after a controversial trial, was convicted of aiding and abetting murder and has been in prison since 1977. | Wikimedia Commons

U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) has joined the call for the release of incarcerated Native American rights activist Leonard Peltier.

Schatz urged President Joe Biden to commute the 77-year-old Peltier’s prison sentence.

“Civil rights leaders and legal experts have called the 1977 trial and conviction of Native American activist Leonard Peltier ‘unjust,’” Schatz posted on Facebook on Jan. 28. “After serving more than four decades in prison and at age 77, Mr. Peltier deserves a presidential commutation. It’s the right thing to do.”

Schatz, who is the second U.S. senator, after Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), to urge for Peltier’s release, commended the president’s commitment to “righting past wrongs in our criminal justice system,” according to the Huffington Post.

A federal judge in 1977 had sentenced Peltier to serve two consecutive life terms for the 1975 murders of FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

According to the Huffington Post, Peltier went to prison without any evidence that he was responsible for the shootout that killed Coler and Williams.

Schatz chairs the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.

"Mr. Peltier meets appropriate criteria for commutation: (1) his old age and critical illness, (2) the amount of time he has already served, and (3) the unavailability of other remedies,” he wrote in a letter to Biden dated Jan. 26. “Mr. Peltier should be granted a commutation of his sentence.”

Peltier’s health is in serious decline because he suffers from diabetes and has had an abdominal aortic aneurysm. He told the Huffington Post last month that his prison facility had failed to give inmates COVID-19 booster shots.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reported that dozens of protesters gathered at the federal courthouse in Albuquerque to demand commutation for Peltier.

Norman Patrick Brown, a member of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, said Peltier is innocent. “He’s been there for 46 years,” Brown told the Santa Fe New Mexican. “He’s ill. He’s frail. I think it’s time that we set him free.”