Biden grants clemency to Native American activist Leonard Peltier, others at last minute

Biden grants clemency to Native American activist Leonard Peltier, others at last minute
UPI

Jan. 20 (UPI) — Former President Joe Biden signed a number of pardons and commutations on his way out of the White House as per tradition.

On Sunday, it was revealed Biden granted clemency to those he felt “made significant contributions to improving their communities,” according to a now-archived statement.

“America is a country built on the promise of second chances,” the former president wrote, adding he used his constitutional power to “make that promise a reality.”

Biden issued a handful of preemptive pardons hours ahead of Trump’s swearing-in including Ernest Cromartie and Gerald Lundergan, a Democratic politician via Kentucky.

And among the names granted clemency Monday was longtime jailed Native American activist Leonard Peltier, who many say was America’s “longest-serving political prisoner” after he was convicted in 1975 of allegedly killing two FBI agents on his property in a trial many viewed as a sham.

Biden “was right” to commute the life sentence of the Indigenous elder and activist “given the serious human rights concerns about the fairness of his trial,” Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said Monday in a statement.

On Friday, Biden commuted the sentence of nearly 2,500 people.

Meanwhile, the British-headquarterd Amnesty International had for decades advocated for Peltier’s release to the U.S. government, doing so publicly at least twice in the last few months of last year.

The Peltier commutation was a long-awaited but surprising announcement after internal pushback by outgoing FBI Director Christopher Wray, who previously appeared to write-off any suggestion that Peltier be set free.

Biden has the distinction of having granted more individual pardons and commutations than any other president in U.S. history.

Amnesty lead scores of high-ranking lawmakers, activists, ex-FBI agents, celebrities and America’s indigenous tribal nations’ leadership who all called for the ailing Peltier to be given his freedom.

On Sunday, the ex-Democratic president granted clemency to five people who largely were convicted of non-violent drug offenses and further commuted sentences of two who Biden felt demonstrated “remorse, rehabilitation, and redemption.”

A posthumous pardon was granted to Black nationalist Marcus Mosiah Garvey who received a 1927 commutation for mail fraud by then-President Calvin Coolidge.

Biden also pardoned the first Black person to serve as speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates convicted in 1994 of a nonviolent drug offense.

Don Scott served seven years in prison.

“I think there are a lot of people like me who deserve second chances and there are people in power who won’t do it, who won’t use the power that they have,” Scott, who got the call from the White House early Sunday morning, told CBS.

In December, Biden made the largest single-day act of clemency in modern American history of around 1,500 civilians and pardoned about 4 others of nonviolent crimes. He also issued a full pardon for his son, Hunter Biden.

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