Leonard Peltier

Leonard Peltier behind bars.

Leonard Peltier (born September 12, 1944) is a Native American activist and member of the American Indian Movement. In 1977 he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for the murders of two FBI Agents who died during a 1975 shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. There has been considerable debate over Peltier's guilt and the fairness of his trial. Some supporters and organizations, including Amnesty International, consider him to be a political prisonerAmnesty International Calls for the Release of Leonard Peltier. Numerous appeals have been filed on his behalf however none have been ruled in his favor. Peltier is currently incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

Early life

Peltier was born on the Anishinaabe (Chippewa) Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. He came from a family of 13 brothers and sisters. Peltier became involved in the American Indian Movement (AIM), eventually becoming the only person to serve a lengthy prison term for any of numerous incidents arising from the conflicts that occurred on the Pine Ridge Reservation in the early 1970s.

Murder conviction

Leonard Peltier was convicted and is currently incarcerated for the murders of FBI Special Agents, Ronald A. Williams, 27, and Jack R. Coler, who died during a 1975 shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Peltier has been in prison since February 6, 1976.

Peltier's conviction sparked great controversy and has drawn criticism from a number of sources. Numerous appeals have been filed on his behalf; none of the rulings have been made in his favor.

Shootout at Jumping Bull Ranch

Special Agents Williams and Coler were searching for a young Pine Ridge man named Jimmy Eagle, wanted for questioning in connection with the recent assault and robbery of two local ranch hands. Williams and Coler observed and approached a vehicle matching the description of a truck Eagle was said to have been in several days earlier. Unknown to the agents, Peltier and others were in the vehicle. At the time, Peltier was a fugitive, with a warrant issued in Milwaukee charging unlawful flight to avoid prosecution for the attempted murder of an off-duty Milwaukee police officer (of which he was later acquitted).

Williams radioed that he and Coler had come under high-powered rifle fire from the occupants of the vehicle and were unable to return fire to any effect with their .38 pistols and shotguns. FBI Special Agent Gary Adams was the first to respond to Williams' call for assistance, and he also came under intense gun fire from Jumping Bull Ranch.

The FBI, BIA, and the local police spent much of the afternoon pinned down on Highway 18, waiting for other law enforcement officers to launch a flanking attack. At 2:30 p.m., a BIA rifleman in the flanking group got a bead on one of the shooters, Joe Stuntz, and killed him.

At 4:30 p.m., authorities recovered the bodies of Williams and Coler at their vehicle, and at 6 p.m. laid down a cloud of tear gas and stormed the Jumping Bull houses, finding Stuntz's corpse clad in Coler's green FBI field jacket.

The others, authorities later reported, had slipped away from the compound after Stuntz's death, to cross White Clay Creek and hide in a culvert beneath a dirt road. With police focused on the storming of Jumping Bull, the group made a break for the southern hills. In the following days, they split into smaller groups and scattered across the country, setting off a nationwide manhunt that lasted eight months.

After the firefight, the FBI reported Williams had received a defensive wound from a bullet which passed through his right hand into his head, killing him instantly. Coler, incapacitated from earlier bullet wounds, had been shot twice in the head execution style. In total 125 bullet holes were found in the agents' vehicles, many from a .223 (5.56 mm) rifle. The FBI investigation concluded the agents were killed at close range by the same .223 caliber rifle.

Aftermath

On September 5, 1975, Agent Williams' handgun, and shells from both Agents' handguns, were found in a vehicle near a residence where Dino Butler was arrested.

On September 9, 1975, Peltier purchased a Plymouth station wagon in Denver, Colorado. The FBI sent out descriptions of it and a recreational vehicle (RV) that Peltier and associates were believed to be traveling in. An Oregon State Trooper stopped the vehicles based on the descriptions and ordered the driver of the RV to exit, but after a brief exchange of gunfire, he escaped on foot. Authorities later identified the driver as Peltier. Agent Coler's handgun was purportedly found in a bag under the front seat of the RV, where authorities reported also finding Peltier's thumbprint. On December 22, 1975 he became the 335th person named by the FBI to the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.

On September 10, 1975, a station wagon blew up on the Kansas Turnpike near Wichita, and a burned-up AR-15 was recovered, along with Agent Coler's .308 rifle. The car was loaded with weapons and explosives which were apparently accidentally ignited when placed too close to a hole in the exhaust pipe. Present in the car among others were Robert Robideau, Norman Charles, and Michael Anderson, said to be associates of Peltier.

Peltier fled to Hinton, Alberta, Canada, where he hid out at a friend's cabin. He was eventually apprehended by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) on February 6, 1976. Peltier was not armed at the time of his arrest.

Peltier fought extradition to the United States, a decision that backfired when Bob Robideau and Darelle "Dino" Butler, AIM members also present on the Jumping Bull compound at the time of the shootings, were found not guilty on the grounds of self-defense by a federal jury in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. As Peltier fled to Canada and then fought extradition, he arrived too late to be tried with Robideau and Butler and was tried separately.

At his trial in US District Court in Fargo, North Dakota, a jury convicted Peltier of the murders of Coler and Williams and the judge sentenced him in April 1977.

Alleged trial irregularities

There has been debate over Peltier's guilt and the fairness of his trial. Several allegations have been made by Peltier's supporters which they claim point to his innocence, and all of these have been disputed by the FBI:
*An FBI agent who testified that the agents followed a pickup truck onto the scene (a vehicle that could not be tied to Peltier) is alleged to have later changed his account to describe a red and white van, a vehicle type which Peltier did drive. Further, as the FBI did not record radio communications in 1975, there was an unresolved discrepancy between Agents as to whether Williams said he was pursuing a "red and white truck" or "pickup truck."
*Three teenaged Native American witnesses testified they saw Peltier approach the slain officers' vehicle, but they later alleged that the FBI had threatened and forced them to testify. The FBI answered that witnesses' testimony was in any case not necessary for conviction.
*An FBI ballistics expert testified that a shell casing found near the dead agents' bodies matched the gun tied to Peltier. Critics argued that an FBI teletype stating the firing pin of the recovered weapon did not match the shell casings proved that Peltier's weapon was not the murder weapon. It was counter-argued in testimony by the FBI that although the marks from the firing pin did not match those on the casing, the firing pin had probably been replaced after the murders, and that the marks made by the rifle's extractor were an exact match to the recovered weapon.

Post-trial debate and developments

A contemporary photograph of Leonard Peltier

Peltier is considered a political prisoner by some of his supporters and has received support from many individuals and groups, including Nelson Mandela, Rigoberta Menchú, Amnesty International, the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, Tenzin Gyatso (the 14th Dalai Lama), the European Parliament, the Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

The case for a Peltier pardon has been two-fold. One argument asserts his innocence, and that he variously had no knowledge of the murders (as he told CNN in 1999), that he has knowledge implicating others which he will never reveal, or (as told in Peter Matthiessen's In the Spirit of Crazy Horse) that he approached and searched the agents but did not execute them. Another argument holds that the killings (no matter who committed them) occurred during a war-like atmosphere on the reservation in which FBI agents were terrorizing residents in the wake of the Pine Ridge standoff in 1972.

Near the end of President Bill Clinton's presidency in 2000, rumors began circulating that he was considering granting Peltier clemency. This led to a campaign against the possibility, culminating in a protest outside the White House by about five hundred FBI agents and their families, and a letter opposing clemency from then FBI director Louis Freeh. Clinton did not grant Peltier clemency; some speculate this was at least partially due to the pressure from these protests.

In 2002, Peltier filed a civil rights lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the FBI, Louis Freeh, and a long list of FBI agents who had participated in the campaign against his clemency petition, alleging that they "engaged in a systematic and officially sanctioned campaign of misinformation and disinformation." On March 22, 2004, the suit was dismissed. US District Court, Peltier v. Freeh, et. al.; March 22, 2004

No consensus has ever been reached regarding the events on Pine Ridge in 1975, even in and among Native-American communities. News from Indian Country publisher Paul Demain wrote in 2003 that an "unnamed delegation" with knowledge of the incident told him, "Peltier was responsible for the close range execution of the agents..." News From Indian Country: Leonard Peltier. Now what do we do?

DeMain described the delegation as "grandfathers and grandmothers, AIM activists, Pipe Carriers and others who have carried a heavy unhealthy burden within them that has taken its toll."

DeMain also stated that a cover-up of Peltier's role in the agents' deaths led to the execution of AIM activist Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, for whose murder two other AIM members were indicted in 2002.

Peltier launched a libel lawsuit against DeMain in 2003. Peltier withdrew the suit after he and DeMain reached a settlement, which involved DeMain writing a statement that he did not think that Peltier himself had shot Aquash.

In February, 2004, Fritz Arlo Looking Cloud was tried for the murder of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash. During her testimony in that trial, Darlene "Kamook" Nichols stated that in late 1975 Peltier confessed to her, her sister Bernie Nichols-Lafferty, Dennis Banks, and Anna Mae that he shot the FBI agents. She testified that Peltier said, "The mother fucker was begging for his life, but I shot him anyway." [1] Bernie Nichols-Lafferty, in an interview on March 9, 2001, also gave the same account of Peltier's statement.[2] On February 10, 2004, Peltier issued a statement where he lamented that, "Kamook's testimony was like being stabbed in the heart while simultaneously being told your sister just died." He denounced it as "fabrications" claiming that, "There must have been some extreme threat the FBI or their cronies put upon her."[3]

On 27th February 2006 U.S. District Judge William Skretny ruled that the FBI did not have to hand over some documents relating to Peltier, ruling that those particular documents were exempted on grounds of national security and FBI agent/informant protection. Peltier's supporters have been campaigning for the release of more than 100,000 pages of FBI documents across the United States. Leonard Peltier Defense Committee: Judge allows FBI to withhold some Peltier documents

Leonard Peltier is waiting for a decision on his 13th February 2006 appeal over his rejected 2005 Motion to Correct an Illegal Sentence.

Peltier for President

Peltier was the candidate for the Peace and Freedom Party in the 2004 Presidential race. While prison inmates convicted of felonies are sometimes prohibited from voting in the United States (Maine and Vermont are exceptions) Maine Today: Inmates in Maine, Vermont are allowed to vote, the United States Constitution has no prohibition against felons being elected to Federal offices, including President. The Peace and Freedom Party secured ballot status for Peltier only in California, where his presidential candidacy received 27,607 votes Results, by district, of Presidential vote in California, 2004, approximately 0.2% of the vote in that state and approximately 0.02% of the nationwide vote.

In culture

The Robbie Robertson album "Contact From The Underworld Of Redboy"(1998), which deals with many Native American themes throughout, features the song "Sacrifice", in which Leonard Peltier gives his own account of his case and subsequent imprisionment via a recorded phone interview.

At Rage Against The Machine shows, before the band would play the song 'Freedom', Zack De La Rocha would repeat "It's been 20 years, there's no proof and he's still in jail!". Also in the "Live and Rare" album on track 3 called "Bombtrack" Zack De La Rocha talked about Peltier. The music video for Freedom contains the story of Leonard Peltier.

Toad the Wet Sprocket's song "Crazy Life," released on their final studio album "Coil," protests Peltier's imprisonment: "Anyway now, it don't seem right / He's in there and you're on the outside / What have you done with Peltier / Who did you think you'd taken away?"

Defunct Philly rap trio The Goats make several mentions of Leonard Peltier on their politically charged 1992 album 'Tricks of the Shade', which include a skit establishing Leonard Peltier as a featured freak in Uncle Scam's Federally Funded Freak Show. Note these lyrics from 'Do the Digs Dug': "Leonard Peltier Leonard Peltier Who da hell is that, why the fuck should ya care? In jail, in jail, in jail like a dealer Fuck George Bush says my T-Shirt squeeler Please oh please set Leonard P. free Cause ya wiped out his race like an ant colony."''

Buffy Sainte-Marie also wrote about Leonard Peltier and the events surrounding his trial in 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee': "We got the federal marshals / We got the covert spies / We got the liars by the fire / We got the FBIs / They lie in court and get nailed / and still Peltier goes off to jail." Indigo Girls popularized this song on their "1200 Curfews" album.

"Incident at Oglala" (1991), a documentary directed by Michael Apted and produced by Robert Redford, examines the 1975 slayings and subsequent legal battles. By interviewing legal experts, eyewitnesses, and former judges, lawyers, and jury members involved in the various trials, this documentary presents the many alleged inconsistencies in the federal case against Peltier

Ben Harper, a popular college-radio music artist, has appeared in several concerts and other public performances with the words "Free Leonard Peltier" written on the face of his guitar.