Court denies Peltier's bid for freedom

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Leonard Peltier's third bid for freedom was denied after a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals spent eight months in deliberation.

Peltier was devastated when he heard the decision, said his finance Lisa Faruolo-Peltier, who broke the news to him in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas.

"He kept telling me to go out and find a husband who could give me a family, that he was going to die in there."

It's been 17 years since the American Indian Movement activist was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences for the murder of two FBI agents during a shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Reservation near Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

Since his conviction, a long series of legal battles has been waged on his behalf and international support from around the world continues to grow.

In the latest appeal, heard Nov. 9, 1992 in St. Paul, Minnesota, there were two issues the judges were asked to rule on, said Faruolo-Peltier, who is also one of two people to run the Leonard Peltier Defence Committee.

The first issue was that Peltier's rights had been violated because the government changed its theory mid-trial. Peltier's lawyers maintained the prosecution switched at trial from arguing that Peltier, a 48-year-old Objiwe and Lakota from North Dakota, had murdered the FBI agents to maintaining he aided and abetted in their murders.

Several U.S. government prosecutors have admitted they don't know who shot

the FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975. Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams were trying to serve a warrant on someone else on the reserve.

"The government felt it had to convict someone of these tragic deaths," said Ramsey Clark, Peltier's attorney and former U.S. Attorney General in the Carter administration.

During the appeal hearing, Clark had less than 20 minutes to make his arguments. He talked about the "long trail of broken treaties and abuse of Indian people." Taking into account the recent history of violent confrontations on the Lakota lands, Clark said, "in many ways it's similar to engagements between cavalry and Indians in the past century."

Two other men were charged in the shootings of the FBI agents. Bob Robideau and Dino Butler argued self defence and were acquitted of the same charges Peltier faced in a 1976 trial in Iowa.

An Indian man, Joseph Stuntz, was also killed in the shootout but no one was tried for his murder.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lynn Crooks, one of the original prosecutors, said the government still believes Peltier delivered the fatal shots. And the government didn't changes its position during the trial; it offered alternate theories on Peltier's part in the crime, Crooks said at the appeal.

But Crooks agreed with Clark that the government lacked evidence that tied Peltier directly to the agents' murders.

"We had numerous shooters. We didn't know who fired which killing shots," Crooks said.

The appeal court panel decided Peltier's due process was not violated because the government didn't change its theory; it didn't have to have one in the first place, Faruolo-Peltier said.

On the second issue, Peltier's claim the government was guilty of misconduct, the court's decision cited the McCleskey case. It was a precedent-setting case in which the Supreme Court decided when filing a writ of habeus corpus, (a writ requiring a person he brought before a court, usually to investigate the lawfulness of his restraint), anything that could or should have been argued already was, so Peltier had nothing new to say.

Hopes were high for a positive decision from the latest hearing, Faruolo-Peltier said. One reason was because of the attention focused on the Rodney King case in Los Angeles.

"We saw a breach of trust between law enforcement and the judiciary with the Rodney King case," she said. "It helped reawaken concern about lawlessness by law enforcement." Rodney King was dragged from his car and beaten by Los Angeles police. A jury verdict of not guilty sparked theL.A. riots, which caused millions of dollars in damages and injured scores of people. A jury in a subsequent trial returned a guilty verdict.

Incident at Oglala, a 1992 documentary narrated by Robert Redford, and a 1983 book about the events helped to refocus attention on the killings, added Faruolo-Peltier.

Numerous supporters have spoken out, signed petitions and written letters on behalf of Peltier since his 1977 conviction. They include U.S. senators and congressmen and 17 million Russian citizens.

At his November appeal hearing, Dianne Martin, a professor at Osgood Hall Law School of York University, spoke on behalf of 55 Canadian Members of Parliament. The MPs believe the U.S. wrongfully secured Peltier's extradition from Canada.

"In my view, it's clear that the extradition treaty was violated," Martin said.

Peltier fled to Canada after learning of an assassination plot against him, which he said the FBI hatched. He was extradited in 1976 by the U.S. government, which used affidavit evidence from Myrtle Poor Bear, a woman from Pine Ridge who allegedly swore she saw Peltier shoot the FBI agents. Poor Bear said an FBI agent threatened to kill her and abduct her daughter if she did not sign the false affidavit incriminating Peltier. She later testified at Peltier's trial for the defence, but the jurors were not allowed to hear her recant the depositions used to convince the Canadian authorities to extradite Peltier.

Judge Gerald Heaney wrote an appeal decision in 1986 affirming Peltier's conviction, which said the appellate court declared the trial "record as a whole leaves no doubt that the jury accepted the government's theory that Peltier had personally killed the two agents, after they were seriously wounded, by shooting them at pointblank range with an AR-15 rifle. Heaney, now a senior judge with the 8th circuit court, recently wrote a letter urging President Bush to consider commuting Peltier's prison sentence.

President Bill Clinton has indicated a awareness of and interest in Peltier's case, Faruolo-Peltier said. While campaigning in Florida last fall, Clinton said he would consider commuting Peltier's sentence.

Peltier's lawyers have filed a motion to re-hear the appeal.

"Our argument is that they skirted the issue," Faruolo-Peltier said.

They are planning a demonstration in Washington sometime in November, she added, and in the meantime, they need support and money.

"We need to get commitments from people to put aside what they're doing and concentrate on Leonard Peltier. Keep those petitions and letters coming in," said Faruolo-Peltier.

Peltier and Faruolo-Peltier have also made a deal. If Peltier is still in prison 10 years from now, when Faruolo-Peltier turns 36 and her biological clock is ticking loudly, she will find someone else.