Before leaving office in January, President Joe Biden commuted the life sentence of Indigenous elder and activist Leonard Peltier, allowing him to finish the remainder of his sentence under home confinement with his loved ones and community.
Peltier, a Native American activist, was imprisoned for nearly 50 years for the murders of two FBI agents in 1975—a crime he maintains he did not commit. Amnesty International had long campaigned for the U.S. government to grant Leonard Peltier clemency. There were serious human rights concerns about the fairness of his trial, to which Amnesty sent observers in 1977. Evidence was withheld by the prosecution, and a key witness, who initially claimed to have seen Peltier kill the agents, later retracted her testimony and said it had been coerced through threats and harassment from FBI agents.