[ The FBI put the Native American activist behind bars 44 years
ago based on lies, threats and no proof he committed a crime. Why is
he still there?] [[link removed]]

LEONARD PELTIER IS AMERICA’S LONGEST-SERVING POLITICAL PRISONER.
BIDEN MAY BE HIS LAST HOPE.  
[[link removed]]


 

Jennifer Bendery
November 12, 2021
HuffPost
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed].]
*
[[link removed]]
*
* [[link removed]]

_ The FBI put the Native American activist behind bars 44 years ago
based on lies, threats and no proof he committed a crime. Why is he
still there? _

Native American activist Leonard Peltier in prison in February 1986.
, AP PHOTO/CLIFF SCHIAPPA

 

Leonard Peltier has been in prison for 44 years for a crime he says he
didn’t commit.

His trial was riddled with misconduct that would never hold up in a
U.S. court today. Prosecutors hid key evidence. The FBI threatened
and coerced witnesses into lying. A juror admitted she was biased
against Peltier’s race on the second day of the trial, but was
allowed to stay on anyway.

There was never proof that he murdered two FBI agents during
that 1975 shoot-out on Pine Ridge Reservation
[[link removed]] in
South Dakota. But the FBI needed someone to take the fall. The agency
had just lost two agents, and Peltier’s co-defendants were acquitted
based on self-defense. This was happening as the FBI was fueling
tensions on the reservation as part of a covert campaign to suppress
the activities of the American Indian Movement, or AIM, a grassroots
group of activists focused on drawing attention to federal treaty
rights violations, discrimination and police brutality targeting
Native Americans.

Peltier, an AIM member, was there that day. So based entirely on
testimony from people who had been threatened and intimidated by the
FBI, and operating within a 1970s-era criminal justice system tilted
in favor of the U.S. government and against Indigenous rights
activists like Peltier, the U.S. Attorney’s Office successfully
charged him with murder.

By all appearances, the FBI wants Peltier to die in prison while
serving two life sentences.

But Peltier is still alive, now 77 and ailing in a Florida
penitentiary. He is perhaps America’s longest-serving political
prisoner, a holdover from a different era of justice. Here in 2021,
his story still moves hundreds of thousands of people
[[link removed]] to
sign petitions in support of his release. An astounding mix of human
rights leaders have urged his release over the years, including Pope
Francis, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela and Coretta
Scott King. Prominent artists including Willie Nelson, Bonnie Raitt,
Jackson Browne and Rage Against The Machine have held concerts in his
name. Elected tribal leaders and the National Congress of American
Indians have passed resolutions urging clemency.

And now, with Joe Biden in the White House, his supporters feel a
renewed sense of hope that Peltier may, at last, have a shot at living
out his final years as a free man.

[Interior Secretary Deb Haaland advocated for Leonard Peltier’s
release from prison when she was a U.S. congresswoman.]

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland advocated for Leonard Peltier’s
release from prison when she was a U.S. congresswoman.  CHIP
SOMODEVILLA VIA GETTY IMAGES

Biden has demonstrated a willingness to address past injustices
against Native Americans. He’s made it a priority to examine the
U.S. government’s ugly history of Indian boarding schools, to
protect sacred Indigenous sites and cultural resources, and to address
the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women. He canceled the
Keystone XL oil pipeline, a major win for Native American tribes and
environmentalists.

He also chose Deb Haaland to lead the Interior Department, making her
the nation’s first Indigenous Cabinet secretary. Haaland advocated
for Peltier’s release from prison
[[link removed]] in
her former role as a U.S. congresswoman.

For Peltier supporters like James Reynolds, these are all reasons for
hope. Reynolds was the U.S. attorney who helped put Peltier in prison
in the 1970s. In an extraordinary July letter to Biden that has not
been made public until now, Reynolds says he has realized over the
years how unfair Peltier’s trial was, and that it would serve
justice to let him go home.

“I write today from a position rare for a former prosecutor: to
beseech you to commute the sentence of a man who I helped put behind
bars,” he wrote. “With time, and the benefit of hindsight, I have
realized that the prosecution and continued incarceration of Mr.
Peltier was and is unjust. We were not able to prove that Mr. Peltier
personally committed any offense on the Pine Ridge Reservation.”

Reynolds pleads with Biden to grant clemency to Peltier as a step
toward healing “the broken relationship” between Native Americans
and the U.S. government.

“I urge you to chart a different path in the history of the
government’s relationship with its Native people through a show of
mercy rather than continued indifference,” he said. “I urge you to
take a step towards healing a wound that I had a part in making.”

Here’s a copy of Reynolds’ letter:

Members of Congress are looking to Biden to free Peltier, too.

Last month, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) led 10 House Democrats in a
letter to the president and Attorney General Merrick Garland
[[link removed]] urging
an expedited release for Peltier. They note that Peltier has serious
health problems with diabetes and an abdominal aortic aneurysm.

“Given the unprecedented impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in our
country, as well as Mr. Peltier’s underlying health conditions and
age, we request immediate action be taken to release him from federal
custody,” reads their letter. “Mr. Peltier has yet to receive a
fair trial that is free from constitutional violations. ... He has
served more than 43 years in the federal prison system, some of which
have been in solitary confinement. The support for Mr. Peltier’s
request for clemency is both widespread and strong.”

Grijalva told HuffPost that Peltier has been punished for maintaining
his innocence. He had a shot at being released in 2009 when he was up
for parole, but it would have required him to admit that he murdered
the two FBI agents.

He wouldn’t do it. His parole was denied.

“Whatever punishment was meant to be meted out to Leonard has been
done. It’s done,” said the Arizona congressman. “The fact that
he has held to his innocence shouldn’t be a reason to deny this. He
has been consistent about his position from the beginning ― from
being arrested to incarcerated to this day.”

The facts may be on Peltier’s side. Biden may be the most receptive
president yet to pleas to end Peltier’s imprisonment. But there’s
still this nagging problem with his case: Nobody in the upper echelons
of the U.S. government seems to want to talk about it.

A White House spokesperson did not respond to multiple requests for
comment on whether Biden would consider clemency for Peltier.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.

The FBI declined to comment.

The most obvious question remains the simplest one: why _is_ Leonard
Peltier still in prison?

“That’s the $64,000 question,” said Kevin Sharp, who is
Peltier’s pro bono attorney. “It’s why it makes my head hurt
trying to figure this out.”

[A group of people support Leonard Peltier during then-President Bill
Clinton's speech on July 7, 1999, on the Pine Ridge Indian
Reservation.]

A group of people support Leonard Peltier during then-President Bill
Clinton's speech on July 7, 1999, on the Pine Ridge Indian
Reservation.  AP PHOTO/CLIFF SCHIAPPA

Sharp didn’t know who Peltier was until a few years ago. A former
U.S. district court judge appointed by President Barack Obama, he had
been on the bench for six years when he stepped down in 2017 over his
disgust with mandatory sentencing laws forcing him to put people in
prison who he otherwise may not have imprisoned at all. He turned
around and became the lawyer for one of the people he had just put
into prison.

In an unexpected turn of events, he connected with Kim Kardashian West
and landed a meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office,
where they lobbied Trump to grant clemency to two people whose cases
they’d gotten involved in. Both of the people Sharp was advocating
for were released, and it wasn’t long before the story made national
news and Sharp’s phone was blowing up with people asking for help
with clemency cases.

One of the people who reached out was Willie Nelson’s ex-wife,
Connie Wilson, a longtime Peltier supporter. She sent Sharp a package
of materials about Peltier’s case, a package that was so big that
Sharp sat down and started going through it out of curiosity. Eight
hours later, after poring over trial transcripts, newspaper clippings
and case opinions, Sharp said he was “floored” by all the problems
with Peltier’s case.

“This thing is so riddled with misconduct and just flat-out court
decisions that would never happen today,” said Sharp. “They
withheld ballistic evidence that proved it wasn’t Leonard’s
weapon. At the very least, we’d need to have another trial…. They
wouldn’t have even gotten an indictment because they had no
evidence, except for three kids pressured to say they saw him. They
recanted all that evidence. And said they were threatened.”

There was a darker element to the case, too. Among the documents Sharp
received was an internal FBI memo, obtained via a Freedom of
Information Act request, directing U.S. attorneys to put all of their
resources into convicting Peltier. All of his co-defendants had been
acquitted. The FBI needed someone to go to prison. Peltier was the
only person left to go after.

Another FBI memo laid out the bureau’s broader strategy for
suppressing AIM, which is what led to the shoot-out in the first
place. The agency’s plan was to “continually harass and arrest and
charge” AIM members to keep them tied up in court, said Sharp, so
they “can’t protest their own treatment.”

AIM members operating out of the Pine Ridge Reservation were
supporting local tribal members in demanding their land back from the
U.S. government, and the FBI wanted them to stop, even if it meant
inciting violence. The bureau was helping the tribal chairman, who was
corrupt and working with the U.S. government for his own purposes, to
carry out violence against AIM members.

“Part of what’s going on is an extermination policy,” said
Sharp. “We’re taking your land, your minerals. We’re going to
get rid of you altogether…. That’s what started it. That’s what
the counterintelligence was running.”

Peltier’s case was also happening just a few years after J. Edgar
Hoover’s reign at the FBI, an era marked by his secretive abuses of
power and tactics aimed at harassing political activists in an effort
to amass secret files on political leaders.

Connecting all these dots, Sharp said he had to take Peltier’s case.

“I’m reading through all this as a federal judge going, ‘Oh my
god, this is all proven,’” he said. “I get back with Connie
Nelson and say, ‘Yeah, I’ll help. I’ll do it pro bono. … This
is too important. This is not about one Indian anymore. This is about
the Constitution.’”

So why, again, is Peltier still in prison, despite all the damning
evidence lining up in favor of his wrongful conviction?

“Politics,” said Sharp. “In order to get clemency, you have to
get the FBI on board. They have an inherent conflict. You have to get
the U.S. Attorney’s Office on board. They lied to get him in prison.
They have an inherent conflict. They’re not going to say, ‘Oops,
sorry.’”

“It’s this holdover with the FBI,” he added.

Sharp filed Peltier’s clemency petition with the Biden
administration in July.

He hasn’t gotten any response.

[Chauncey Peltier, son of Leonard Peltier (pictured on the video
behind him), speaks at Harry Belafonte's Many Rivers Music, Art &
Social Justice festival in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia, in October
2016.]

Chauncey Peltier, son of Leonard Peltier (pictured on the video behind
him), speaks at Harry Belafonte's Many Rivers Music, Art & Social
Justice festival in Chattahoochee Hills, Georgia, in October 2016. 
NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

HuffPost talked to a number of people who have played a role in either
fighting or preserving Peltier’s imprisonment over the years ―
international human rights attorneys, senior-level officials from the
Obama administration, Peltier’s longtime allies ― and they all
pointed to the same reason for him remaining in prison: resistance
from the FBI.

Justin Mazzola, deputy director for research at Amnesty International
USA, said he and his colleagues were “completely blindsided” when
Obama declined to grant clemency to Peltier at the end of his
presidency. Amnesty International USA has devoted an entire campaign
to Peltier’s release and believed that Obama would deliver.

“I really think it’s the weight that the FBI and Justice
Department carry that prevents presidents from granting clemency,”
said Mazzola, suggesting Peltier’s case raises particular red flags.
“Not only because he was convicted of killing 2 FBI agents, but all
of these issues at trial come down to issues by the FBI and U.S.
Attorneys that were involved in his case.”

“It’s a travesty of justice,” he added.

Going back further, some of Peltier’s supporters say President Bill
Clinton appeared ready to grant Peltier clemency until the FBI
signaled it would cause trouble for him.

“We were told at the time that the Clintons were agonizing, that the
night before he left office, he was agonizing over the Peltier
case,” said Jack Magee, a longtime friend of Peltier’s and
organizer with the International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, a
hub of communication between Peltier and the public, political and
tribal leaders, and the media. “The following morning, Leonard’s
name was gone [from the clemency list].”

Days earlier, FBI leadership had quietly signaled approval of
nearly 500 active and retired FBI employees gathering outside the
White House
[[link removed]] to
protest Clinton potentially releasing Peltier. That, in itself, was a
stunning break from discipline.

“I think Bill Clinton wanted to free Leonard,” said Magee. “But
[the FBI] had issues they could use against him. He had the option of,
‘Go and live a good life, get a quarter million dollars for a good
speech, or do this and we’ll hurt you, make your life
miserable.’”

Sharp was heavily lobbying Trump to release Peltier in his final days
in the White House. He even had colleagues on the phone with Jared
Kushner and Ivanka Trump one morning, and said he was “looking for
anything for leverage” to use to make his case for Peltier. But he
stopped getting calls back by noon.

And like his White House predecessors, Trump ultimately punted on it.

[FBI agent and president of the FBI Agents Association John Sennett
holds a petition with 9,500 names on it aimed at pressuring
then-President Bill Clinton not to pardon Leonard Peltier during an
incredibly unusual demonstration outside the White House on Dec. 15,
2000.]

FBI agent and president of the FBI Agents Association John Sennett
holds a petition with 9,500 names on it aimed at pressuring
then-President Bill Clinton not to pardon Leonard Peltier during an
incredibly unusual demonstration outside the White House on Dec. 15,
2000.  JOYCE NALTCHAYAN VIA GETTY IMAGES

The FBI’s resistance to releasing Peltier doesn’t appear to have
changed much in four decades, but the culture and attitudes around it
have.

George Floyd’s murder and the Black Lives Matter movement have
forced conversations on the nation’s fundamental problems with
racism and law enforcement. In a time of deep political polarization
in Congress, criminal justice reform has strong support from both
parties. The president of the United States is taking major, historic
steps to rectify past injustices against Native Americans, and has
made significant Indigenous hires within his administration.

If anything, Peltier’s activism from decades ago has come full
circle.

“Absolutely,” Grijalva said. “What was being fought for ― to
define history in Indigenous terms, not just in white people’s terms
― that was the battle. And that continues.”

But there is still a man in prison who shouldn’t be there. And given
his failing health, Peltier’s last shot at freedom almost certainly
rests with Biden.

“He’s out of appeals,” said Mazzola of Amnesty International.
“He has no real opportunities.”

HuffPost requested an interview with Peltier, either by phone or in
person at his prison. But Sharp said the Federal Bureau of Prisons has
to give Peltier permission to talk to reporters, and it’s “next to
impossible” to make it happen.

A spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons did not immediately
respond to HuffPost’s request for an interview.

Reynolds, the former U.S. Attorney, said he keeps thinking about how
Peltier was charged with murder for being present during a violent
scene where people were killed ― the same circumstances for hundreds
of Trump supporters during the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, except they
all just went home afterward.

He can’t shake the unfairness of it all. And the racism beneath it.

“Why aren’t all the Jan. 6 rioters charged with murder? They were
all there. People were killed. What’s the difference?” he asked.
“Leonard at least had a more legitimate argument to make, that he
was protesting government conduct and their treatment of the
Indians.”

Reynolds said he hasn’t spoken to Peltier since helping to put him
in prison so many years ago. Asked what he would say to him now, if he
could say something, he went quiet.

“I’m sorry,” Reynolds finally said. “I’m sorry I can’t
convince anyone else that you should be able to go home and die.”

_Jennifer Bendery is a senior politics reporter for HuffPost. She has
covered Congress and the White House for HuffPost since April 2011. _

 

*
[[link removed].]
*
[[link removed]]
*
* [[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web [[link removed]]
Submit via email
Frequently asked questions [[link removed]]
Manage subscription [[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org [[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]