|
Amnesty
International is appealing for the release from prison of Leonard
Peltier, an Anishnabe-Lakota Indian, who is serving two consecutive
life-sentences for the murders of two Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) agents. The FBI agents, Ronald Williams and Jack Coler, were
shot at point-blank range after being wounded in a gunfight with
Indian activists on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation on 26 June
1975. Peltier fled to Canada. He was extradited to the USA and
convicted of the murders in 1977.
Amnesty
International has investigated this case for many years. Although
Amnesty International has not adopted Leonard Peltier as a prisoner
of conscience, the organization remains concerned about the fairness
of the proceedings leading to his conviction and believes that
political factors may have influenced the way in which the case was
prosecuted. Peltier is now in his twenty-second year of imprisonment
and has exhausted all legal appeals against his conviction. He was
denied parole (early release under supervision of the criminal
justice system) in 1994 following a parole hearing in 1993 and his
case will not be heard again via a full hearing by the Parole
Commission until December 2008. Amnesty International has for some
years been calling on the federal government to institute an
executive review of the case but there is no evidence of any such
action having been taken. In view of Amnesty international's
continuing concerns about this case, and the fact that available
remedies have been exhausted, Amnesty International is now calling
for Leonard Peltier to be released from prison through an act of
presidential pardon.
|
|
Background
and Summary
of
Amnesty International's Concerns
A summary of the
case, describing the circumstances in which the agents were killed
and Peltier's trial and appeals, is contained in the attached extract
from Amnesty International's rep on USA: Human Rights and American
Indians (AI Index AMR 51/31/92), entitled "Other Cases of
Concern: Leonard Peltier." As outlined in this document, Peltier
was a leading activist with the American Indian Movement (AN) whose
members were involved in a campaign to protect traditional Indian
lands and resources and had come into conflict with both the Pine
Ridge tribal government and the FBI. Two other AIM members, Darelle
(0ino) Butler and Robert Robidean, were originally charged with the
FBI agents' murder and were tried separately in 1976. They admitted
being present during the gunfight but were acquitted on grounds of
self-defence, after submitting evidence about the atmosphere of fear
and terror which existed on the reservation prior to the shoot-out.
There is evidence
that the government intensified its pursuit of Leonard Peltier after
the acquittal of Butler and Robideau. Peltier was extradited from
Canada partly on the testimony of Myrtle Poor Bear, an American
Indian woman who signed a statement saying she had seen Peltier shoot
the agents at close range. Poor Bear, who was a notoriously
unreliable witness, later retracted this statement as having been
obtained under duress and said she had never even met Peltier. The
prosecution did not use Myrtle Poor Bear as a witness at Peltier's
trial. However, they introduced ballistics evidence which purported
to show that it was Peltier's gun which killed the agents at close
range after they were already wounded and disabled. This evidence
effectively prevented Peltier from being able to present the same
self-defence argurnent which had resulted in the Butler/Robideau
acquittals. However, serious questions have since been raised about
the reliability of this ballistics evidence.
The government has
continued to argue that, even if they can no longer prove that
Peltier killed the agents, he is still guilty of "aiding and
abetting" in the murders through being in the group involved in
the exchange of gunfire from a distance. However, Amnesty
International believes that the doubts which have been raised about
Peltier's role in the actual killings of the agents undermine the
whole case against him, as "proof" that he was the actual
killer was a key element in the prosecution's case at the trial.
Amnesty
International's concerns about various aspects of the case are
outlined in a letter to the US Attorney General dated 23 June 1995,
which is also attached to this action. These concerns include the following:
-
The FBI knowingly
used perjured testimony to obtain Leonard Peltier's extradition from
Canada to the USA. The FBI later admitted that it knew that the
affidavits of Myrtle Poor Bear, an alleged eye-witness to the
murders, were false. This in itself casts serious doubt on the bona
fides of the prosecution, even though Poor Bear's affidavits were not
used at Peltier's trial.
-
Leonard Peltier's
attorneys were not permitted to call Myrtle Poor Bear as a defense
witness to describe to the trial jury how she had been coerced by the
FBI into signing false affidavits implicating Peltier. The trial
judge refused to allow her to appear on the grounds that her
testimony could be "highly prejudicial" to the government.
-
Evidence which
might have assisted Leonard Peltier's defense was withheld by the
prosecution. This included a 1975 telex from an FBI ballistics expert
which stated that, based on ballistics tests, the rifle alleged to be
Peltier's had a "different firing pin, from the gun used to kill
the two agents. At a court hearing in 1984, an FBI witness testified
that the telex had been merely a progress report and that another
bullet casing tested later had been found to match
"positively" with the rifle linked to Peltier. However, the
reliability of the government's ballistics evidence remains in dispute.
-
The ballistics
evidence presented at Peltier's trial was crucial to the
prosecution's case. It was presented as the main evidence linking
Peltier as the actual point-blank killer of the two FBI agents.
Without this evidence, the case against Peltier would have been no
stronger than the case against Dino Butler and Robert Robideau, who
were also charged with the Pine Ridge killings. Butler and Robideau
were tried separately and permitted to argue that there was an
atmosphere of such fear and terror on the reservation that their move
to shoot back at the agents constituted legitimate self-defense. They
were acquitted.
-
The trial judge
refused to allow the defense to introduce evidence of serious FBI
misconduct relating to the intimidation of witnesses (the testimony
of Myrtle Poor Bear). Had such evidence been presented, it may have
cast doubt in the jury's mind about the reliability of the main
prosecution witnesses, three young Indians (Anderson, Draper and
Brown) whose testimony (that Peltier was in possession of an AR-15
rifle during the shoot-out) was the main evidence linking Peltier to
the alleged murder weapon.
The United States
Court of Appeal for the Eighth Circuit ruled in 1986 that the
prosecution had indeed withheld evidence which would have been
favourable to Leonard Peltier and would have allowed him to cross
examine witnesses more effectively. However, it concluded that this
had not materially affected the outcome of the trial, and it upheld
Peltier's conviction. However, the judge who wrote this opinion,
Judge Gerald Heaney, has since expressed his concern about the case.
In a 1991 letter to Senator Daniel Inouye, Chair of the Senate Select
Committee on Indian Affairs, Judge Heaney expressed his belief that
"the FBI used improper tactics in securing Peltier;s extradition
from Canada and in otherwise investigating and trying the Peltier
case. Although our court decided that these actions were not grounds
for reversals, they are, in my view, factors that merit consideration
in any petition for leniency filed." He also stressed the need
to take into account the background context to the fire-fight during
which the two agents had been killed (see Amnesty International's
letter to the Attorney General of 23 June 1995).
|
