Former U.S. Attorney Supports Clemency for Leonard Peltier

In the closing weeks of the Obama administration, supporters of imprisoned Native American rights activist Leonard Peltier have found an unexpected new ally: the very federal prosecutor whose office secured his conviction four decades ago.

A Prosecutor’s Change of Heart

James H. Reynolds, the former U.S. attorney for Iowa who oversaw the government’s prosecution and later its opposition to Peltier’s appeals, sent a letter to the White House and Department of Justice on December 21 formally asking President Obama to grant Peltier clemency. “I just thought that it was time,” Reynolds told FSRN. “With all the circumstances that have gone down, both good and bad, it was maybe time for the president to grant clemency and to end the justice part of the case.” Reynolds was careful to frame his position as one about the passage of time and Peltier’s failing health, not a reversal on guilt or innocence: “40 years is enough,” he said, according to CBC’s reporting on his letter.

Peltier, now 71 and in declining health, was convicted in 1977 of killing two FBI agents during a 1975 shootout at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. He has maintained his innocence throughout more than four decades in federal prison, becoming, in the eyes of many Indigenous rights advocates, both an elder statesman of the American Indian Movement and one of the most prominent political prisoners in the United States.

A Case Long Marked by Disputed Evidence

Peltier’s trial and conviction have drawn sustained scrutiny for decades. The government never produced an eyewitness to the actual killing of the two agents. Myrtle Poor Bear, the prosecution’s key witness during Peltier’s extradition from Canada, later recanted her testimony entirely, saying she had signed three separate affidavits under pressure from FBI agents — and when she attempted to testify to that pressure at trial, the presiding judge ruled her incompetent and barred her testimony outright, according to detailed case history compiled by the Santa Barbara Independent. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals itself later criticized the U.S. Attorney’s office for using what prosecutors eventually acknowledged was fabricated evidence to secure Peltier’s extradition in the first place.

That history has drawn an unusually broad and prominent coalition to Peltier’s cause over the years. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and Guatemalan Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchú have all previously called for his release, and by January 2017, more than 100,000 people had signed an Amnesty International petition urging Obama to act before leaving office, according to Truthout’s coverage of the mounting campaign. A former FBI special agent, John “Jack” Ryan, added his own voice days after Reynolds, writing that “the circumstances surrounding the case in combination with the passage of 4 decades of time served support his request to live his final years at home,” according to Amnesty International’s reporting.

A Movement That Sees Itself in Standing Rock

Peltier has continued to closely follow contemporary Indigenous organizing from behind bars, drawing an explicit throughline between his own history and the resistance then unfolding at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline. He has written about the connection himself, noting that some of the movement’s leaders at Standing Rock are veterans of the resistance at Pine Ridge, where a 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee in the 1970s ended with a government pledge to investigate historic treaty violations — a pledge Peltier and other AIM veterans note has never been fulfilled.

A Decision That Didn’t Go Peltier’s Way

Despite the breadth of support Reynolds’ letter helped galvanize — support that would eventually include a personal appeal from Pope Francis, according to later reporting — President Obama ultimately denied Peltier’s clemency request on January 18, 2017, just two days before leaving office. Peltier’s attorney received formal notice that the application had been “carefully considered” by the Department of Justice and the White House, and that “favorable action is not warranted,” according to Heavy’s coverage of the denial, with the notice specifying that under the Constitution, no appeal from that decision exists.

Advocates for Peltier’s release have continued the fight in the years since, including a renewed clemency request James Reynolds himself joined again in 2021, this time addressed to President Biden — a reminder that for a case built, in Reynolds’ own words, on “the totality of all matters involved,” the passage of additional years since this January 2017 request has done little to resolve the question of whether Peltier will ultimately be freed.

For related coverage of Indigenous rights and pipeline resistance, see our piece on Cheyenne River Sioux Chairman’s meeting with Obama over Dakota Access, or browse our full Policy & Rights archive.