Sundance: David France and Jesse Short Bull's film tackles the 50-year story of activism surrounding the contentious conviction of the prominent American Indian Movement leader, whose sentence was commuted just one week before the film's premiere.

President Biden commuted the prison sentence of Leonard Peltier, an imprisoned Native American rights activist, using his final minutes of presidential power on Monday to free a man who has spent nearly 50 years in federal prison after he was convicted of murder in connection with the killing of two F.B.I. agents.

American Indian activist Leonard Peltier speaks during a 1999 interview at the U.S. Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan. President Joe Biden commuted to home confinement Peltier's life sentence after he spent most of his life in prison for the killing of two FBI agents in South Dakota in 1975.

Moments before he left office and as one of his final acts as president, Joe Biden commuted the life sentence of Leonard Peltier, an 80-year-old Native American activist and political prisoner who has been incarcerated for nearly half a century for a crime he maintains he did not commit.

If there were ever a case that merited compassionate release, Leonard Peltier’s was it,” said Schatz, who serves as vice chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, in a statement. “President Biden did the right thing by showing this aging man in poor health mercy and allowing him to return home to spend whatever days he has remaining with his loved ones,

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.