As one of his last official acts, President Biden commuted the life sentence of Leonard Peltier, 80, allowing the American Indian Movement member to serve the rest of his sentence in home confinement.

Peltier was convicted of murdering two FBI agents during a 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He has maintained his innocence during his nearly 50 years in prison.

In a statement announcing the commutation, Biden said that Peltier suffers from serious health problems and has spent most of his life in prison. He will be transferred to home confinement Feb. 18 and has not been pardoned for his crimes.

“It’s finally over — I’m going home,” Peltier said, according to a social media post from the NDN Collective, an indigenous rights group. “I want to show the world I’m a good person with a good heart. I want to help the people, just like my grandmother taught me.”

Last summer, Peltier’s latest request for parole was denied after a 6 ½-hour hearing at the Coleman I Penitentiary, part of a federal prison complex northwest of Orlando. One of his attorneys, Kevin Sharp, has called Peltier’s conviction based on “a seriously flawed set of facts,” and “tainted with investigation and prosecutorial misconduct.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray opposed Peltier’s latest request for release writing to the parole commission there was “overwhelming and unassailable evidence of his guilt, the brutality of his crimes, and his persistent refusal to accept responsibility.”

Yet, Peltier’s role in the deaths of Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams has long been disputed by a vast number of supporters who feel he is a political prisoner. Calls for Peltier’s release received international backing, including from Amnesty International and the late South African leader Nelson Mandela.

In a statement, Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA, praised Biden’s decision to commute Peltier’s sentence “given the serious human rights concerns about the fairness of his trial.”

In 1975, Coler and Williams were shot while driving separate vehicles pursuing a robbery suspect on the Pine Ridge Reservation. A gunman then shot the agents at close range, killing them.

The FBI said Peltier was the shooter and he was convicted in 1977 and given two life sentences. His supporters have argued that prosecutors only showed he was present at the shootout and not that he fired the fatal shots.

Previously, in 1973, members of the American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee, S.D. in a historic standoff with federal authorities over Indian rights issues. In 1974, two AIM leaders, Dennis Banks and Russell Means went on trial in St. Paul, but a federal judge dismissed the charges, citing misconduct.

The outgoing president issued a record number of pardons before leaving office Monday. Biden issued broad pardons to members of his family, including his son Hunter, and some public officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley and members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack to guard against political “revenge” by the Trump administration.

Star Tribune staff writers Randy Furst and Andy Mannix contributed to this story.

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