Yesterday, February 6, 2022, Leonard Peltier began his forty-seventh year of incarceration since his arrest in Canada after fleeing the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and the brutal murder of FBI Agents Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams.
Peltier was indicted for murder and aiding and abetting and then tried, convicted and sentenced for two consecutive life sentences. Throughout a dozen appeals, some based on marginal or frivolous claims of a wrongful conviction, neither his conviction nor any subsequent court decisions have been overturned. Peltier’s years of falsehoods and fabrications have been disproven as nothing more than myth and folklore, along with many of his self-incriminating public statements.*
Peltier has now reached twenty-three years’ incarceration for each murder. Contrary to Peltier’s claims of what a ‘life’ sentence was, under the guidelines when he was sentenced, eligibility for parole (with no guarantees) was twenty-five years. In theory, that could make him eligible for parole in four more years. However, that is in addition to the seven consecutive years he still owes for the armed escape from Lompoc Penitentiary, bringing his total commitment to sometime in 2027.
In another recent Peltier plea for cash, an online fundraising page stated:
As former US Attorney James Reynolds noted, Leonard Peltier cannot be shown to have committed any crimes on the Pine Ridge Reservations yet remains incarcerated on falsified eyewitness testimony, fabricated ballistics evidence and other malfeasance that even Reynolds noted “corners were shaved.” In the interest of justice Leonard Peltier needs to be free.
This isn’t exactly what Mr. Reynolds provided in writing and during a NY Daily News interview; but close.
Has it dawned on Peltier supporters anywhere that for Reynolds to have actually stated: “we might have shaved a few corners here and there,” (the actual quote) that he is implicating himself in some manner of an alleged wrongful conviction?
Whether Reynolds actually believes that, along with his thoroughly unsupported claims of supervising Peltier’s appeals, is irrelevant, because his credibility has been thoroughly shattered.**
The fund page erroneously attributed statements from Reynolds:
For example, “falsified eyewitness testimony.” Actually, Native American witnesses swore on the Pipe and said they were telling the truth.*** Also, there was no “fabricated ballistics evidence.” A three-day evidentiary (ballistics) hearing, and yet another venture to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals (September 11, 1986) proved otherwise.
It would be refreshing if Peltier supporters tried just a little harder to get their facts straight and not continue promoting the myth and folklore, while now relying on erroneous public statements.
“In the Spirit of Coler and Williams”
Ed Woods
*http://wwwnoparolepeltiercom-justice.blogspot.com/2019/03/
http://www.noparolepeltier.com/debate.html#smoking
*** “However, upon further questioning at trial by the government attorney, they stated that the testimony they gave at the trial was the truth, as they best remember it.”
“Brown, also stated that he lied to the grand jury. However, he affirmed, after his testimony regarding lying to the grand jury, that his testimony at trial was the truth.”
“The two witnesses testified outside the presence of the jury that after their testimony at trial, they had been threatened by Peltier himself that if they did not return to court and testify that their earlier testimony had been induced by F.B.I. threats, their lives would be in danger.”
(Direct Appeal, September 14, 1978)
(Norman Brown) “They marched me in. This whole crowd of native people. As I was walking down the aisle there, I hear words spoken to me. ‘There’s that sell out. There’s that pig, there’s that little asshole,’ and you know, ‘That’s him. Hey asshole,’ like little whisper.”
(Arts & Entertainment documentary, Murder on a Reservation, October 17, 2000)
Author’s note: And there are more examples.
