Leonard Peltier is America's longest-held Indigenous prisoner. He should be freed
Its time for Leonard Peltier to go home to end his senseless suffering and 45 years of unjust imprisonment. Last Friday, after complaining of a rough cough, the 77-year-old Native elder tested positive for Covid-19. Peltiers continued confinement at the United States penitentiary in Coleman, Florida, might be a death sentence, if the Biden administration doesnt act quickly, and with conscience.
Freedom for Peltier is one step towards addressing centuries of injustice facing Indigenous people as well as addressing the inhumane conditions of incarceration that have been exacerbated by the pandemic.
Peltier, the longest-held Indigenous political prisoner in the United States, is facing a potentially life-threatening situation. He is an elderly Anishinaabe and Dakota man who suffers from several serious underlying conditions: his age, diabetes, hypertension, heart condition and abdominal aneurism make his health precarious in prison without Covid-19 and ever more dire with it.
Peltier is locked away in a prison Covid-19 isolation unit which is not a medical unit even though the man who helped put him there has called for his release. James Reynolds, one of the main federal prosecutors who put Peltier behind bars in 1977, wrote to Biden last year asking the president to commute Peltiers sentence and to grant him executive clemency. Why? According to Reynolds, the government had lied, deceived, used racism and faked evidence to sentence Peltier for two consecutive life terms in prison.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/02/leonard-peltier-is-americas-longest-held-indigenous-prisoner-he-should-be-freed
bahboo
(16,309 posts)free him.
SharonClark
(10,014 posts)How can we make it happen?
mdelaguna
(471 posts)mdelaguna
(471 posts)Joe whats up? Lets go. Matthiessen laid out the reasons to release him decades ago
McKim
(2,412 posts)I am writing to my senators and President Biden on this issue. I tutored his son back in the day at a country school. Also I recommend buying his prints and paintings to support him.
It is a stain on our country that he is still in prison. Biden can show mercy and let him come home to the family.