Jennifer Bendery is a senior politics reporter for HuffPost. She has covered Congress and the White House for HuffPost since April 2011. She previously reported on Congress for four years for Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, and spent four years covering the Texas Legislature for GalleryWatch in Austin, TX.
WASHINGTON — Sen. Brian Schatz on Wednesday urged President Joe Biden to use his final days in office to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier , a Native American rights activist who has been in prison for nearly 50 years despite a deeply flawed trial andfrom human rights leaders, legal experts and even some of the people who helped put him in prison in the first place.
Peltier was accused of murdering two FBI agents in a 1975 shoot-out on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. But his trial was rife with misconduct: The FBI threatened and coerced witnesses into lying. Federal prosecutors hid evidence that exonerated 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 said 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.
With weeks left in his presidency, Biden has the authority to unilaterally grant compassionate release to Peltier. Presidents typically announce batches of pardons late in the year, and particularly at the ends of their terms.In Peltier’s case, Biden could avoid some controversy by simply commuting his sentence versus granting a pardon, which inherently suggests the government is acknowledging it did something wrong. Commuting Peltier’s sentence would just mean his prison time is over.
Criminal Justice Brian Schatz Leonard Peltier
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