Biden commutes Leonard Peltier’s sentence

(AP) – Just moments before he left office, former President Joe Biden commuted the life sentence of activist Leonard Peltier… who was convicted in the 1975 shooting deaths of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
Peltier will transition to home confinement, Biden said in a statement. Peltier was denied parole as recently as July and wasn’t eligible for parole again until 2026.
Peltier was active in the American Indian Movement of the 1960s. The movement grabbed headlines in 1973 with a 71-day standoff with federal agents at Wounded Knee.
A standoff two years later ended with two FBI agents being shot in the head as well as the death of AIM member Joseph Stuntz.
After fleeing to Canada and being extradited to the United States, Peltier was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced in 1977 to life in prison, despite defense claims that evidence against him had been falsified.