At around 8:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, after a half century behind bars, Leonard Peltier walked out of a Florida prison and into a gray Chevrolet headed to Leesburg International Airport.
Creative Loafing Tampa Bay photographer Dave Decker said the 81-year-old Indigenous activist boarded a private plane just before noon.
His departure from Coleman Correctional Institution, about an hour north of Tampa, comes less than 30 days after President Joe Biden’s dramatic last-minute commutation of Peltier’s two consecutive life sentences.
Peltier’s conviction is internationally recognized as one of the most corrupt court proceedings in American history. His imprisonment stems from a 1975 incident at the Pine-Ridge Reservation in South Dakota when the FBI raided the land and began a conflict with members of the Oglala Lakota Nation, including women and children. Several natives and two FBI agents were killed as a result of the incident.
There was never any evidence that Peltier killed the agents.
[content-1] Peltier is expected to fly to North Dakota where he’ll join friends and family in the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, and complete the rest of his sentence, according to a statement from the NDN Collective.
Peltier was arrested in Alberta, Canada by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on Feb. 6, 1976, and extradited to the United States. In his statement released minutes before the inauguration of Donald Trump, Biden made clear that the communication was not a pardon.
“He is now 80 years old, suffers from severe health ailments, and has spent the majority of his life (nearly half a century) in prison,” the then-president wrote.
As previously reported, the movement to free Peltier has come close before and was hard fought by the NDN and others like Jean Roach—of the Mnicoujou Lakota from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, who served as a board member of the International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee.
On Jan. 20, Sheridan Murphy, who’s long been involved in Indigenous protest, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that the communication was a release and sentimental, too.
“I mean, there’s a lot of people that have put a lot of effort into this for 50 years,” Murphy, who’s long been involved in Indigenous protests, added. “So to see this happen is just amazing. It’s going to be a real good feeling across most of Indian country today and in the next few days.”
Murphy, who was seen outside Coleman on Tuesday and with Peltier at Leesburg International Airport, could not immediately be reached for comment.
This is a developing post.
