On July 2 the U.S. federal Parole Commission once again denied Leonard Peltier’s request for parole. The hearing, the first in over a decade, took place June 10.
Peltier, a leader of the American Indian Movement, has been in federal prison for almost 50 years. He was framed up by the FBI for the 1975 shooting death of two of their agents on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge reservation. AIM and Peltier were targets of an FBI Cointelpro operation.
Conditions on the reservation were abysmal. Alcoholism was rife, unemployment reached 70%, life expectancy was 44 years. Life was controlled by Tribal Chairperson Dick Wilson, who organized his own special armed force, appropriately named GOON — Guardians of the Oglala Nation.
Residents asked Peltier to organize AIM volunteers to come to the reservation and help protect them. The FBI and other police agencies were sent to spy on them. When FBI agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams approached their camp, a shootout broke out and the two agents, as well as a young Indian named Joseph Stuntz, were killed.
The FBI claimed it was Peltier who shot the FBI agents at close range, but there is no physical evidence linking him to their deaths. A 1975 laboratory ballistic report, which the FBI refused to turn over to Peltier at his trial, showed the bullets didn’t come from his gun. Government lawyers now admit they don’t know who fired the shots.
James Reynolds, one of the lead prosecutors who helped send Peltier to prison, now calls for his release. The trial “was unusually troublesome,” he says, admitting the FBI played a “role in the creation of dangerous conditions on Pine Ridge.”
The FBI continues to campaign against any release for Peltier.
Peltier’s attorney, Kevin Sharp, says they will continue to fight for his release, but “his next hearing is set for 2039, when he would be 94.”
“Hope is a hard thing to hold, but no one is strong enough to take it from me,” Peltier wrote to his supporters in 2023. “There is a lot of work left to do, I would like to get out and join you in doing it.”
Join in demanding the Joseph Biden administration grant Peltier his freedom!