Justice for Indigenous Leader Leonard Peltier

Last updated March 2023

Mural of Leonard Peltier. Photo by Scott Braley.

Indigenous rights activist Leonard Peltier is often considered to be the longest-serving political prisoner in the United States. Following a trial riddled with irregularities and misconduct, he was convicted of killing two FBI agents and sent to prison in 1977. Despite the United States government's openly stating that it cannot prove that Mr. Peltier committed the murders for which he was convicted, he remains in prison after nearly a half century. Those who have called for his release include renowned human rights activists and leaders such as Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Pope Francis, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Mother Teresa, along with eight Nobel Peace Prize laureates, including Rigoberta Menchú.

Currently, Mr. Peltier is detained in a maximum-security penitentiary in Florida, where he has been denied adequate medical care for numerous potentially fatal medical conditions. The facility, which the U.S. Department of Justice found to be insufficiently staffed for the COVID-19 pandemic, has failed to protect its prisoners from the virus. Mr. Peltier’s delicate health situation worsened after he contracted COVID in the prison.

The University Network for Human Rights, in collaboration with Yale Law School and Columbia Law School students, provided support in drafting a request for precautionary measures, which grant legal protections to those facing grave harms, to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of Mr. Peltier. Students have also begun drafting a petition to the Commission requesting his release, to be submitted later in 2023.