[Ppnews] Why is Leonard Peltier Still in Prison?

[Political Prisoner News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/bollinger07162009.html

July 16, 2009


Justice is 33 Years Overdue for America's Most Famous Political Prisoner

Why is Leonard Peltier Still in Prison?

By MICHELLE BOLLINGER

Leonard Peltier is an innocent man who has spent over 33 terrible 
years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.

In 1977, he was sentenced to two consecutive life terms for the 
deaths of two FBI agents, Jack Coler and Ronald Williams, who were 
killed in a gunfight on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota on 
June 26, 1975.

Peltier's case is one of the awful travesties of the U.S. justice 
system--standing alongside those of Sacco and Vanzetti, Julius and 
Ethel Rosenburg, and Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Like these individuals, Peltier is rightly considered by his 
supporters to be a political prisoner--because his prosecution and 
conviction was driven solely by his participation in the American 
Indian Movement (AIM) in the 1970s. Since his conviction in 1977, he 
has been a victim--repeatedly--of the racism of the U.S. criminal 
justice system.

But Leonard Peltier is not simply a victim. He is also a fighter.

Leonard and his friends, family, allies and supporters have been 
courageous and relentless in speaking out for justice in Leonard's 
case, even when faced with government repression for doing so. And 
Peltier has stood up for justice not only in his own case, but on 
behalf of indigenous people and all victims of war, poverty and racism.

In his memoir 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312263805/counterpunchmaga>Prison 
Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance, he wrote:

The destruction of our people must stop! We are not statistics. We 
are people from whom you took this land by force and blood and 
lies...You practice crimes against humanity at the same time that you 
piously speak to the rest of the world of human rights! America, when 
will you live up to your own principles?

Views such as these, along with the work he has done setting up 
scholarships for Native American children, among other efforts, 
explains why Peltier was a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize and the 
2004 presidential candidate of the Peace and Freedom Party.

Our society would benefit enormously from having someone like Leonard 
living as a free man. Instead, at age 64, he languishes in prison 
while in poor health. Earlier this year, he was brutally beaten; he 
has been repeatedly denied proper medical care.

On July 28, Peltier will appear at his first full parole hearing in 
15 years. Now is the time to rebuild momentum around his case and 
demand his release and exoneration--and put his name back at the 
center of the fight against the criminal justice system.

* * *

PELTIER WAS indicted along with two others in the 1975 shootout at 
the Jumping Bull property. His co-defendants, Bob Robideau and Dino 
Butler, represented by famed radical attorney William Kunstler, were 
acquitted on the basis of self-defense.

Humiliated by the not-guilty verdict for Robideau and Butler, the 
government went after Peltier with a vengeance. It lied, cheated and 
slammed the book on any sense of justice to ensure a conviction.

The Feds used three perjured affidavits to get Peltier extradited 
from Canada, to which he had escaped. During the trial itself, 
Peltier faced an all-white jury in North Dakota, where racism against 
Native Americans and hostility to AIM was palpable. The jury was 
unnecessarily sequestered and deliberately made to feel vulnerable by 
the judge. This same judge wouldn't allow Leonard's attorney's to 
argue self-defense.

Assistant U.S. attorney Lynn Crooks didn't produce any witnesses who 
could identify Peltier as the person who killed the agents. The 
government presented false evidence--the claim that only Peltier had 
the type of gun that killed the agents--and also concealed evidence 
showing that the gun they claimed Peltier used didn't match the 
bullet casings found near the agent's bodies.

Documents uncovered later through Freedom of Information Act requests 
revealed, among other things, that the judge met with the FBI before 
the trial began, and that the legal defense committee that emerged 
out of the Wounded Knee occupation had been infiltrated.

None of these facts are really contested by the federal government. 
In fact, at an appellate hearing in the 1980s, the government 
attorney conceded: "We had a murder, we had numerous shooters, we do 
not know who specifically fired what killing shots...we do not know, 
quote unquote, who shot the agents."

But the government was hell-bent on convicting Peltier in order to 
crush AIM, which was founded in 1968 and reached its high point in 
cities and on reservations in the mid-1970s.

AIM clearly took inspiration from the civil rights and Black Power 
movements of the 1960s as well as struggles for national liberation 
around the world. Its profile and credibility was heightened by 
several bold actions, including in 1972, when it mobilized 1,400 
people for a three-day occupation of the border town of Gordon, Neb., 
in response to the murder of Raymond Yellow Thunder by white racists.

Peltier became a leading activist in AIM, participating in the 
occupation of Fort Lawton in Seattle and the "Trail of Broken 
Treaties" caravan to Washington, D.C., which resulted in AIM's 
stunning occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) building.

According to Like a Hurricane author Paul Chaat Smith:

[T]his sudden rebellion in Washington, D.C., had catastrophic 
possibilities that bordered on the surreal. Five days before the 
presidential election, Indian revolutionaries held a government 
building six blocks from the White House, vowing to die rather than 
surrender. The casualties, if it came to that, would likely include 
the Trail's scores of children and old people.

In 1973, in response to the rampant fraud, intimidation and violence 
of Oglala Sioux tribal government President Dick Wilson, traditional 
people and civil rights activists on the Pine Ridge reservation in 
South Dakota invited AIM to come help them fight Wilson.

This resulted in the famous 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee, where 
AIM demanded Wilson's ouster and Congressional hearings on treaty 
rights. The occupation drew broad support and was headline news, 
creating an outpouring of support for the Lakota people.

But it was viciously attacked by the FBI, U.S. Marshals, and Dick 
Wilson's heavily armed "GOONs" (Guardians of the Oglala Nation). 
Within hours, 200 agents surrounded and blockaded the town. The army 
sent in armored personnel carriers, fighter jets flew overhead, and 
500,000 rounds of ammunition were fired into Wounded Knee, killing 
Frank Clearwater and Buddy Lamont.

Coming out of Wounded Knee, AIM and its supporters were targets in a 
two-sided war--on one side, by the FBI in the form of its overall 
COINTELPRO program against radicals, and on the other, a reign of 
terror by BIA police, other federal law enforcement and GOONs. 
Between 1973 and 1976, the per capita murder rate on Pine Ridge was 
the highest in the country--170 per 100,000 people, or around 20 
times the U.S. average.

This was the context of the famous "Incident at Oglala."

On June 26, 1975, two unmarked cars chased a red truck onto the 
Jumping Bull property on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Across the field 
from the road was the compound where the Jumping Bull family lived, 
and where AIM members and families had set up camp. When the agents, 
who hadn't identified themselves, then began firing on the ranch, 
Peltier and others, who were defending the compound against violence, 
fired back, not knowing who the men were or what they wanted.

Within minutes, more than 150 FBI SWAT team members, BIA police and 
GOONs had surrounded the ranch. FBI agents Coler and Williams, as 
well as one Lakota man, Joe Killsright Stuntz, were killed. No one 
has ever been convicted of Joe Stuntz's death, and in fact, only one 
major newspaper even mentioned it at the time.

The largest FBI manhunt in history followed, culminating in the 
arrest of Robideau, Butler and Peltier.

* * *

SINCE THE time of his conviction, countless numbers of people have 
come to believe in Leonard Peltier's innocence and to demand his freedom.

In the late 1990s, the documentary Incident at Oglala and Peter 
Matthiessen's book 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140144560/counterpunchmaga>In 
the Spirit of Crazy Horse became popular, and led to a heightened 
awareness about Peltier's case. Everyone from the Indigo Girls to 
Rage Against the Machine has recorded songs about him.

Many supporters hoped that former President Bill Clinton, who stopped 
at the Pine Ridge reservation during his 1999 poverty tour, would 
grant Leonard executive clemency. But Clinton succumbed to pressure 
from police and FBI agents, and refused to free Leonard--saving his 
generosity for wealthy benefactors like Mark Rich.

After Clinton came eight long years of the Bush administration's many 
abuses of the U.S. Constitution--including more cases of political 
persecution, like that of Dr. Sami Al-Arian. Unfortunately, this has 
meant that Peltier's case has been somewhat pushed to the margins of 
political consciousness.

But no longer. Justice is long overdue. We must include the fight for 
Leonard's freedom in a bigger struggle to free all political 
prisoners and push back against the injustices of the criminal justice system.

What You Can Do

What you can do Leonard Peltier will face his first full parole 
hearing in 15 years on July 28, and his supporters are calling for a 
campaign of pressure. Mail letters of support to: U.S. Parole 
Commission, 5550 Friendship Blvd. #420, Chevy Chase, MD 20815-7286.

Visit the <http://www.freepeltiernow.org/>Free Leonard Peltier 
Website for more information on the case, sample letters to send to 
the parole commission and updates on other activities.

Michelle Bollinger lives in Washington, DC.




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