Political Prisoner Leonard Peltier is Up for Parole This Month
![[Image: leonard-peltier.jpg]](http://willienelsonpri.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/leonard-peltier.jpg)
“I AM but a common man, I am not a speaker but I have spoken. I am not all that tall, but I have stood up. I am not a philosopher or poet or a singer or any of those things that particularly inspire people, but the one thing that I am is the evidence that this country lied when they said there was justice for all… I am just a common man and I am evidence that the powers that put me here would like to sweep under the carpet. The same way they did all of our past leaders, warriors and people they massacred. Just as at Wounded Knee, the Fifth Cavalry sought its revenge for Custer’s loss and massacred some 300 Indian men women and children, then gave out 23 Medals of Honor and swept the evidence of their wrongdoing aside… I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in this prison. And I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life in some prison of the mind, heart or attitude. I want you to enjoy your life.
If nothing else give somebody a hug for me and say, ‘This is from Leonard.’”
In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,
Leonard Peltier
NOTE: Read Leonard Peltier’s full June 26
statement. Peltier is up for parole on July 28. His supporters and friends have launched a letter-writing campaign to
support his release from prison after 34 years.
Magda,
Thank you for posting this.I will send the link on to others.
Keith
There are two documentaries that I would like to place on here.The first is titled "Incident At Oglala".This is the story about the situation on the Pine Ridge Reservation that led to Leonards arrest.The second is titled "Trudell".It is the story of another AIM(American Indian Movement)member John Trudell.I have found them on Google video.Their might be better ways to download and watch these,but I'm not as good as most of you here on doing research on the computer.So I will just post these links.If you haven't already seen these films,please watch them.Thanks.......
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=In...emb=0&aq=f#
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=tr...oq=Trudell#
Leonard Peltier is denied parole.I am not able to see much hope left for him to be a free man again.They will let him go home when he is on his deathbed..........:mad:
AMY GOODMAN: The imprisoned Native American activist Leonard Peltier has been denied parole again. The US Parole Commission told the sixty-four-year-old Peltier Friday his release would, quote, “depreciate the seriousness of [his] offenses” and, quote, “promote disrespect for the law.” It was Peltier’s first full parole hearing in fifteen years. He will not be eligible again for parole until July 2024 at the age of seventy-nine.
Leonard Peltier has been in prison for thirty-three years, convicted of killing two police—two FBI agents during a shootout on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. Peltier has long maintained his innocence and has been widely considered a political prisoner who was not granted a fair trial. He is now being held at the Lewisburg prison in Pennsylvania.
I’m joined on the phone by his attorney, Eric Seitz. He represented Peltier at his parole hearing, joining us on the phone from his home in Hawaii.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Thank you for waking up very early, Eric. Describe what happened, what you learned on Friday.
ERIC SEITZ: Well, what we learned was that the Parole Commission, which is a holdover group of people from the Bush administration and an agency of the Justice Department, is never going to parole Leonard Peltier. They adopted in full the position of the FBI that if you kill an FBI agent, you should spend the rest of your life in jail, even if there are serious questions about the conduct of the FBI itself and of the government in prosecuting him.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the questions in this case and the other men who were tried separately who were acquitted years ago.
ERIC SEITZ: There was a trial of two people who were indicted with Leonard. It was held in Cedar Rapids, Iowa before a jury that acquitted them on grounds of self-defense.
The FBI, after that case, decided they couldn’t risk a reoccurrence of the same outcome, so they came up with some ballistics evidence, which purported to link Leonard to the fatal shots by which the FBI agents were killed after this shootout had occurred for some period of time and the two agents had been fatally wounded. So they convicted Leonard of firing the fatal shots, according to the jury.
And afterwards, it turned out that the ballistics evidence was questionable, at best. But the courts have refused to set aside or disturb the outcome since then. So Leonard has actually been in prison now for more than thirty-three years for a crime of which the only other two people who were actually put on trial were acquitted, and that raises all kinds of questions about the fairness of the proceedings and of, in particular, the fairness of the judgment in his case.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, in Leonard Peltier’s case, he would have been tried with these men, but he, fearing he would not get a fair trial, had fled to Canada, so he was not tried and then tried separately.
ERIC SEITZ: That’s right. And then there were all kinds of questions about the proceedings by which he was returned to this country from Canada. It is an admitted fact that in the extradition proceedings, the FBI used a series of affidavits that they themselves wrote, purporting to be from a witness who was an eyewitness who wasn’t even there. So the affidavits were perjured, and yet the Canadian government readily agreed at some point to send Leonard back. And after that evidence about the perjury came out, the United States government refused to take any action to correct the situation.
So there have been all kinds of issues about this case which have percolated for more than thirty-four, thirty-five years. And we were hoping at this point in time that we could get a fair consideration from the Parole Commission. We had a very good six-hour hearing before an examiner, not the commission itself, but on their review of the examiner’s recommendations, which we still have never even seen, the Parole Commission basically adopted the position of the FBI. And in some sense, that’s actually helpful to us, because it makes it clear that they are violating the law and the guidelines, and they are basically succumbing to this whole theory that if you kill an FBI agent, you should never be paroled, and that’s not what the law requires.
AMY GOODMAN: The documents that have not been released in Leonard Peltier’s case, how many are there?
ERIC SEITZ: Well, there are thousands of documents from the investigation itself going back to the mid-1970s and beyond that. And a lot of those documents have been shrouded in various levels of secrecy, and there have been Freedom of Information Act cases that have been filed. And many of them have been flushed out, and at various times that’s how we learned about the ballistics evidence that was fraudulent, and that’s how we also learned about the nature of the FBI’s investigation and the fact that they focused on Leonard and the way in which they did after losing the first trial.
Now we’re going to try to get some more of those documents and, in particular, the documents at the Parole Commission, and we’re contemplating the possibility of further litigation, although I think probably much more fruitful at this point is going to be an effort to try to get clemency for Leonard, in terms of his advanced age, in consideration of his health, and because of the fact that this just simply is a case that needs to be brought to resolution properly.
AMY GOODMAN: Have you spoken to Leonard? And what is his response?
ERIC SEITZ: I have not been able to speak with him, because I can’t get calls in to him over the weekend. Other people have talked to him. And I have not yet really found out from them what the results of their visits were over the weekend. But I am hoping to speak with him either today or tomorrow.
AMY GOODMAN: And again, while we reported that he doesn’t have—he’s not eligible for parole again until July 2024, when he’s seventy-nine, his chances before then?
ERIC SEITZ: Well, as far as the parole board is concerned, there are no chances, because they’re not going to change their position unless the personnel of the parole board changes dramatically.
Basically they have taken a hard-line position. He qualifies for parole, which was the difference this time around. He’s served the minimum time that’s necessary. He’s done everything in prison that he needs to do to make himself qualified. He came up with a parole plan prospectively for where he’s going to live and work for the rest of his life, with people to take care of him. All of those things are requirements, which he met. The only requirement he didn’t meet, according to them, which he can’t change, is the fact that he committed a crime that they regard as so heinous that he should never be released from prison. So, as far as the parole board is concerned, we will file a mandatory appeal to exhaust the channels there, but we have virtually no sense that they are going to change their position ever.
AMY GOODMAN: Eric Seitz, we’re going to leave it there, because we have to move quickly on to our last segment. Again, commenting on Leonard Peltier, who was denied parole once again, Eric Seitz, his attorney.
Statement by Leonard Peltier's lawyer
“The Bush Administration holdovers on the U.S. Parole Commission today adopted the position of the FBI that anyone who may be implicated in the killings of its agents should never be paroled and should be left to die in prison. Despite judicial determinations that the unrepentant FBI fabricated evidence and presented perjured testimony in Leonard Peltier's prosecution; despite a jury's acquittal on grounds of self-defense of two co-defendants who were found to have engaged in the same conduct of which Mr. Peltier was convicted; despite Mr. Peltier's exemplary record during his incarceration for more than 33 years and his clearly demonstrated eligibility for parole; despite letters and petitions calling for his release submitted by millions of people in this country and around the world including one of the judges who ruled on his earlier appeals; and despite his advanced age and deteriorating health, the Parole Commission today informed Mr. Peltier that his "release on parole would depreciate the seriousness of your offenses and would promote disrespect for the law," and set a reconsideration hearing in July 2024. This is the extreme action of the same law enforcement community that brought us the indefinite imprisonment of suspected teenage terrorists, tortures, and killings in CIA prisons around the world and promoted widespread disrespect for the democratic concepts of justice upon which this country supposedly was founded. These are the same institutions that have never treated indiginous peoples with dignity or respect or accepted any responsibility for centuries of intolerence and abuse. At his parole hearing on July 28th Leonard Peltier expressed regret and accepted responsibility for his role in the incident in which the two FBI agents and one Native American activist died as the result of a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Mr. Peltier emphasized that the shootout occurred in circumstances where there literally was a war going on between corrupt tribal leaders, supported by the government, on the one hand, and Native American traditionalists and young activists on the other. He again denied -- as he as always denied -- that he intended the deaths of anyone or that he fired the fatal shots that killed the two agents, and he reminded the hearing officer that one of his former co-defendants recently admitted to having fired the fatal shots, himself. Accordingly, it is not true that Leonard Peltier participated in "the execution style murders of two FBI agents," as the Parole Commission asserts, and there never has been credible evidence of Mr. Peltier's responsibility for the fatal shots as the FBI continues to allege. Moreover, given the corrupt practices of the FBI, itself, it is entirely untrue that Leonard Peltier's parole at this juncture will in any way "depreciate the seriousness" of his conduct and/or "promote disrespect for the law."
See also
http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=...08211188〈=e
A very sad, but predictable outcome. Peltier is innocent and just a scapegoat because two FBI [holy holy holy] men were killed and someone non-white [in this case Native American activist] had to take the 'fall'. Our prisons are full to bursting with innocent people or people serving long to life sentences for minor or political 'crimes' [like thinking or speaking-out against the injustices of society and the criminal OverClass that rules, etc.]. Peltier is a good man who, yes, sadly, likely will not be let out alive...but we can still try to help fight to get him out. We are all like Peltier and all Abu Jimal imprisoned - whether we know it or not. They have the added injustice of physical confinement and loss of movement. We who still think and question realize we are all 'political prisoners'. Free Peltier!
That a Native America [the first to be exploited, killed, enslaved, robbed, raped, mistreated in our country] should suffer like this only makes the judicial obscenity worse. I was so saddened to hear the news...but in the policestate that is America today, little else could be expected, sadly.
Keith Millea Wrote:There are two documentaries that I would like to place on here.The first is titled "Incident At Oglala".This is the story about the situation on the Pine Ridge Reservation that led to Leonards arrest.The second is titled "Trudell".It is the story of another AIM(American Indian Movement)member John Trudell.I have found them on Google video.Their might be better ways to download and watch these,but I'm not as good as most of you here on doing research on the computer.So I will just post these links.If you haven't already seen these films,please watch them.Thanks.......
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=In...emb=0&aq=f#
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=tr...oq=Trudell#
Hey Keith, I meant to thank you for posting the links to these videos but I see I hadn't done that. So, thank you!
I think there was a Hollywood make of the Ogalala story called Thunderheart or something similar. I'm not too sure how close to reality it was and it has been many years since I saw it so my recall may be off but I thought AIM came out of it looking pretty good and the FBI not so good (except the half Indian FBI agent hero of the moment) Not bad for Hollywood anyway.
[QUOTE]I think there was a Hollywood make of the Ogalala story called Thunderheart or something similar. I'm not too sure how close to reality it was and it has been many years since I saw it so my recall may be off but I thought AIM came out of it looking pretty good and the FBI not so good (except the half Indian FBI agent hero of the moment) Not bad for Hollywood anyway.
[QUOTE]
Yes Magda,Thunderheart is strongly based on the situation at the Pine Ridge Reservation.Just a little tweeking,and some Native mysticism thrown in.Val Kilmer plays the (good) FBI agent.John Trudell also plays a role in this movie.I liked the movie alot.Recommended highly.