Leonard Peltier
| Leonard Peltier | |
|---|---|
Peltier in 1972
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| Born |
September 12, 1944 Grand Forks, North Dakota, United States |
| Residence | United States Penitentiary, Coleman |
| Political party | American Indian Movement |
| Criminal charge | First-degree murder |
| Criminal penalty | 2 life sentences |
| Criminal status | In prison; next scheduled parole hearing 2024 |
| Parent(s) | Leo Peltier Alvina Robideau |
Leonard Peltier (born September 12, 1944) is a Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM). In 1977, he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for first-degree murder in the shooting of two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents during a 1975 conflict on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Peltier's indictment and conviction have been the subject of much controversy; Amnesty International placed his case under the "Unfair Trials" category of its Annual Report: USA 2010.
Peltier is incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary, Coleman in Florida. Peltier became eligible for parole in 1993; his next scheduled parole hearing will be in July 2024, when Peltier is 79. On January 18, 2017, the Office of the Pardon Attorney announced that President Barack Obama had denied Peltier's application for clemency. Peltier can apply again for commutation in 2018. Barring appeals, parole, or presidential pardon or clemency, Peltier's projected release date is October 11, 2040, at the age of 96.
Peltier was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota, the eleventh of thirteen children, to Leo Peltier and Alvina Robideau. His father was Turtle Mountain Chippewa on his paternal side and French on his maternal side, and his mother was Dakota Sioux and French on her mother's side and Chippewa on her father's. Peltier's parents divorced when he was four years old. At this time, Leonard and his sister Betty Ann were taken to live with their paternal grandparents Alex and Mary Dubois-Peltier in the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation of the Turtle Mountain Chippewa near Belcourt, North Dakota. In September 1953, at the age of nine, Leonard was enrolled at the Wahpeton Indian School in Wahpeton, North Dakota, an Indian boarding school run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). He graduated from Wahpeton in May 1957, and attended the Flandreau Indian School in Flandreau, South Dakota. After dropping out in the ninth grade, he returned to the Turtle Mountain Reservation to live with his father.
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