President Joe Biden has commuted the sentence of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, who was convicted in the 1975 killings of two FBI agents and is serving life in prison

The ailing Native American rights activist has been in prison for nearly 50 years after the U.S. government lied to put him there.

President Joe Biden on Monday commuted the sentence of Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist convicted of killing two FBI agents nearly 50 years ago in South Dakota. Peltier, 80, is a citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota.

The Native American activist says he did not receive a fair trial in the slayings of FBI agents Ronald Williams and Jack Coler at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

The last-minute decision allows the 80-year-old Leonard Peltier to serve the remainder of his sentence under home confinement.

In one of his final acts while in office, outgoing President Joe Biden commuted the life sentence for activist Leonard Peltier, who has already served 49 years in prison in the shooting deaths of two federal agents during a standoff at Pine Ridge in 1975.

The outgoing Biden administration has released Leonard Peltier from prison. Numerous activists and tribal officials have requested the release of Peltier, whom they believe to be innocent of killing two FBI agents in 1975.

Native American activist Leonard Peltier said spending the rest of his life in home confinement after being granted clemency by former President Joe Biden is "as good as freedom," after Biden's own FBI director opposed commutation for a man sentenced to life for the killing of two FBI agents.

President Joe Biden, as one of his last acts on Monday, commuted the sentence of Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist who was serving life in prison after being convicted of killing two FBI agents 50 years ago on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.