With just minutes left as president, Joe Biden on Monday pardoned his entire immediate family—and gave clemency to prominent Native American activist Leonard Peltier.
Biden pardoned his younger brother James Biden, his sister-in-law Sarah Biden, his younger sister Valerie Biden Owens, his brother-in-law John Owens, and his younger brother Francis Biden “FOR ANY NONVIOLENT OFFENSES against the United States which they may have committed or taken part in during the period from January I, 2014, through the date of this pardon.”
Biden also commuted the sentence of Peltier. While he did not receive a pardon, he will be serving the rest of his life sentence in home confinement. Peltier is an indigenous activist affiliated with the American Indian Movement, which sought to address police brutality against Native people. He was sentenced in 1975 for the murder of two FBI agents during a shooting on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Peltier is now 80 years old, in ailing health, and has maintained his innocence throughout his nearly 50 years behind bars. Even one of the former federal prosecutors who put Peltier behind bars, James Reynolds, thinks that he’s innocent.
“We were not able to prove that Mr. Peltier personally committed any offense on the reservation. As a result to Mr. Peltier’s conviction, now arrest, is that he was guilty of a murder simply because he was present on the reservation that day,” Reynolds wrote in a letter to Biden. “He has served time for more than 46 years on the hands of minimal evidence, a result I strongly doubt would be upheld in any court today.”
This story has been updated.
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