Recently, before his term ended, President Joe Biden decided to commute the life sentence of Leonard Peltier. Peltier, a left-wing activist, was found guilty of the murders of FBI special agents Ronald Williams and Jack Coler in 1975 during a shootout in South Dakota.
Peltier’s request for parole was rejected in July. Previous Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama also turned down his pleas for clemency. However, Peltier had support from notable Democrats such as Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, as well as former Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.
This decision angered the FBI Agents Association and came shortly after FBI Director Christopher Wray urged Biden not to release Peltier.
“The FBI Agents Association (FBIAA) is outraged by President Biden’s decision to commute the sentence of Leonard Peltier, a convicted cop killer responsible for the brutal murders of FBI Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams,” FBIAA President Natalie Bara told Fox News Digital. “This last-second, disgraceful act by then-President Biden, which does not change Peltier’s guilt but does release him from prison, is cowardly and lacks accountability. It is a cruel betrayal to the families and colleagues of these fallen Agents and is a slap in the face of law enforcement.”
On June 26, 1975, Williams and Coler were looking for a group of armed robbery suspects in the Oglala Sioux Indian Reservation in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. Although Peltier wasn’t one of them, he was traveling in a vehicle that caught the agents’ attention.
The agents weren’t aware that Peltier was also the subject of an arrest warrant for the attempted murder of an off-duty police officer in Wisconsin.
Former President Joe Biden delivers his farewell address to the nation from the Oval Office of the White House on January 15, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Mandel Ngan/Getty Images)
According to court documents, Williams warned Coler over the radio that someone in the vehicle was about to start shooting at them. Gunfire erupted. Both agents were wounded. According to the FBI, both agents were executed with point-blank gunshots to the head from Peltier’s AR-15.
Coler, originally from Bakersfield, California, had been an LAPD officer before joining the FBI in 1971. Williams was also a California native, from Glendale. He joined the FBI in 1972.
“The pardon of Leonard Peltier is not an act of justice but an abandonment of it,” said Nicole Parker, a former FBI agent who lost two colleagues of her own to line-of-duty violence.
“I myself lost my dearest friend and colleague, FBI Special Agent Laura Schwartzenberger, and Special Agent Daniel Alfin when they were murdered February 2, 2021, executing a search warrant to stop a child predator,” she told Fox News Digital. “The crushing heartbreak of losing mighty warriors who selflessly protect others is indescribable.”
A 1985 prison portrait of American Indian Movement (AIM) activist Leonard Peltier, who was convicted in 1976 of the murders of FBI agents Ronald Williams and Jack Coler. (MPI/Getty Images)
Four men were arrested in their deaths, but only Peltier was convicted, according to the FBI. The government dropped charges against James Eagle, the robbery suspect Williams and Coler were looking for at the start of the shootout. Two other men, Robert Robideau and Darrelle Butler, were acquitted at trial in 1976.
After his release from federal prison, he is expected to be placed on house arrest.
“Agents Coler and Williams gave their lives in service to this nation, and their families continue to bear the heavy burden of that sacrifice,” Bara said. “The loss of these heroes is felt as deeply today within the FBI family as it was in 1975. Leonard Peltier has never expressed remorse for his actions. Special Agents Coler and Williams were stolen from their families, robbed of the chance to share precious time and milestones with their loved ones. Leonard Peltier should not have been granted a mercy he so cruelly denied to the Coler and Williams families.”
