Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier is set to be released from a Florida prison Tuesday based on former President Joe Biden having commuted his life sentence for the 1975 killings of two FBI agents, a decision that elated Peltier’s supporters while angering law enforcement officials who believe in his guilt.

For nearly half a century, Peltier’s imprisonment has symbolized systemic injustice for Native Americans across the country who believe in his innocence. The decision to release the 80-year-old to home confinement was celebrated by supporters.

“He represents every person who’s been roughed up by a cop, profiled, had their children harassed at school,” said Nick Estes, a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe who has advocated for Peltier’s release.

But the last-minute move as Biden was leaving office also prompted criticism from those who say Peltier is guilty, including former FBI Director Christopher Wray, who called him “a remorseless killer” in a private letter to Biden that was obtained by The Associated Press.

“Granting Peltier any relief from his conviction or sentence is wholly unjustified and would be an affront to the rule of law,” Wray wrote.

The commutation was not a pardon for crimes committed, something that Peltier’s advocates have hoped for since he has always maintained his innocence.

Peltier, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota, was active in the American Indian Movement, which beginning in the 1960s fought for Native American treaty rights and tribal self-determination.

The group grabbed headlines in 1969, when activists occupied the former prison island of Alcatraz in the San Francisco Bay, and again in 1972, when they presented presidential candidates with a list of demands including the restoration of tribal land. After they were ignored, they seized the headquarters of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

From then on the group was subject to FBI surveillance and harassment under a covert program that sought to disrupt activism and was exposed in 1975.

Peltier’s conviction stemmed from a confrontation that same year on the Oglala Sioux Indian Reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, in which FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams were killed. According to the FBI, the agents were there to serve arrest warrants for robbery and assault with a dangerous weapon.

Prosecutors maintained at trial that Peltier shot both agents in the head at point-blank range. Peltier acknowledged being present and firing a gun at a distance, but said he fired in self-defense. A woman who claimed to have seen Peltier shoot the agents later recanted her testimony, saying it had been coerced.

He was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and given two consecutive life sentences.

Two other movement members, co-defendants Robert Robideau and Dino Butler, were acquitted on the grounds of self-defense.

Peltier was denied parole as recently as July and was not eligible to be considered for it again until 2026.

“Leonard Peltier’s release is the right thing to do given the serious and ongoing human rights concerns about the fairness of his trial, his nearly 50 years behind bars, his health and his age,” said Paul O’Brien, executive director with Amnesty International USA in a statement. “While we welcome his release from prison, he should not be restricted to home confinement.”

Prominent Native American groups like the National Congress of the American Indian have called for Peltier’s release for decades, and Amnesty International considered him a political prisoner. Prominent supporters included South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, civil rights icon Coretta Scott King, actor and director Robert Redford and musicians Pete Seeger, Harry Belafonte and Jackson Browne.

Generations of Indigenous activists and leaders lobbied multiple presidents to pardon Peltier. Former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and the first Native American to hold the secretary’s position, praised Biden’s decision.

“I am grateful that Leonard can now go home to his family,” she said Jan. 20 in a post on the social platform X. “I applaud President Biden for this action and understanding what this means to Indian Country.”

As a young child, Peltier was taken from his family and sent to a boarding school. Thousands of Indigenous children over decades faced the same fate, and were in many cases subjected to systemic physical, psychological and sexual abuse.

“He hasn’t really had a home since he was taken away to boarding school,” said Nick Tilsen, who has been advocating for Peltier’s release since he was a teen and is CEO of NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led advocacy group based in South Dakota. “So he is excited to be at home and paint and have grandkids running around.”

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco on Monday launched his campaign for California governor, painting himself as a law-and-order conservative who can right a state in decline after decades of mismanagement by Democratic leadership.

Before hundreds of supporters gathered in Riverside, Bianco, 58, said the California dream had “turned into a nightmare” for people struggling with rising prices for food, groceries, electricity and housing.

“What is it that they have given us?” Bianco said of Democrats. “Rampant crime, higher taxes, the highest cost of living in our nation, tent encampments in every major city, more fentanyl deaths, catastrophic fires, a broken homeowners’ insurance market. … Californians deserve better.”

As some of his supporters waved signs that read, “California is home. You don’t have to move,” Bianco said he was “tired of my friends leaving the state. I’m tired of watching my friends’ kids leave this state.”

Bianco is the highest profile Republican to enter the 2026 race to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom, joining a crowded field of Democrats. Newsom is serving his second term and cannot run again.

Bianco was elected Riverside County sheriff in 2018 and reelected in 2022. He has built a statewide profile as a vocal critic of Newsom and the state Legislature’s Democratic supermajority.

He’s drawn headlines for his refusal to enforce potential vaccine mandates for Sheriff’s Department employees during the COVID-19 pandemic; a civil rights investigation into his department by state prosecutors, which Bianco has said is politically motivated; and his support for Proposition 36, the ballot measure voters approved last fall to stiffen criminal penalties for theft and fentanyl dealing.

“We won that fight, and we won it big,” Bianco said of Proposition 36. The California electorate’s two-thirds support for the measure, he said, was a repudiation of Democratic leaders who “tried their best to keep it off our ballot, to prevent all of you from forcing them to do what was right.”

The last Republican to be elected governor in California was Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006. About one in four voters in California is a registered Republican, compared with almost 46% who are Democrats and 22% who have no party preference.

Bianco told the crowd that his campaign will not be about party politics, but “about the common goal we all have for a better California.” He later told reporters: “I have to be a Republican, because they make us register as something.”

Pam Nusser of Riverside said Bianco won her support during the pandemic, when he refused to enforce health department orders to close businesses, including her barbecue restaurant.

“I love him,” Nusser said. “He can’t be intimidated and he can’t be bought.”

Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco speaks with the media after announcing his bid for governor Monday.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Bianco last year joined a coalition of sheriffs from across the U.S. who endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ tough stance on immigration, which included transporting immigrants to so-called sanctuary cities across the country.

This month, he swatted aside rumors that Riverside County sheriff’s deputies were assisting with immigration raids at schools and churches, saying his deputies would not assist with “any type of immigration enforcement.”

He said he would “do everything I can within the confines of the sanctuary state laws of California” to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to “remove criminals from our jails.”

Bianco also faced scrutiny after a data leak revealed that in 2014 he had been a member of the Oath Keepers, a far-right group whose members participated in the pro-Trump insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Bianco later said he didn’t renew his membership because the organization “did not offer me anything.”

Nearly a year and a half before the primary election in June of 2026, the race for governor is still wide open.

The biggest question mark is whether former Vice President Kamala Harris, a Bay Area native who lives in Los Angeles, will jump into the fray. Bianco said he hoped so.

“To run against her and her history in California, I’d welcome that,” Bianco said.

Harris’ entry could spell bad news for the current field of Democrats, including Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, state schools chief Tony Thurmond, former state Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and businessman and philanthropist Stephen Cloobeck.

Other well-known Democrats said to be considering a run for governor include former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter of Irvine and former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.

Other potential Republican candidates include conservative commentator Steve Hilton and former state Sen. Brian Dahle, who ran against Newsom in 2022.