June 12, 2025 • 41 mins
In part three of this three-part series, at Leonard’s trial in 1977 federal prosecutors changed the failed narrative from the Butler / Robideau trial, claiming that Leonard executed the agents with an AR15 that they claimed matched casings found near the bodies.
Bruce Ellison and Ron Kuby explain how false evidence was used to secure a conviction that survived our appellate system and 8 presidencies. But through it all, Leonard never gave up, and with the help of tribal advocate Holly Macarro, he was finally granted clemency in the final minutes of the Biden Administration.
The Wrongful Conviction of Leonard Peltier is a production of Lava For Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1. It follows the January 2025 Sundance premiere of the documentary FREE LEONARD PELTIER, a searing investigation of the case from Public Square Films and directors David France and Jesse Short Bull.
DONATE DIRECTLY BY CHECK TO
LEONARD PELTIER
PO BOX 760
Belcourt ND 58316
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt34966036/
https://ndncollective.org/free-leonard-peltier/
https://lavaforgood.com/podcast/414-guest-host-john-huffington-with-elmer-daniels/
https://birchbarkbooks.com/products/prison-writings
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/322000/in-the-spirit-of-crazy-horse-by-peter-matthiessen/
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Previously on our coverage of the wrongful conviction of Leonard Peltier,
Federal prosecutors used false evidence to extradite Leonard Peltier from
Canada to the United States, where his code efendants had
just been acquitted on the grounds of self defense for
the June nineteen seventy five fatal shooting deaths of two
FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation. So in preparation
(00:27):
for Leonard's trial, they traded a premeditated ambush narrative for
one claiming that after the agents pursued Leonard onto Jumping
Bull Ranch to serve a warrant, a firefight had ensued,
and when the agents were wounded, the beds claimed that
Leonard approached them with an AR fifteen, which ejected a
shell casing into the agent's trunk as he executed them
(00:50):
in cold blood, but hidden evidence said otherwise, this is
wrongful conviction. You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for
Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction
(01:22):
for the final episode in our coverage of Leonard Peltier,
where once again I'm joined by you know him and
you love him, Ben Bolin from the podcast Stuff They
Don't Want You to Know.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Thank you, Jason. We'll pick up on this story where
we left off when the federal prosecutors have been granted
a change of venue from Cedar Rapids, Iowa to Fargo,
North Dakota, where Judge Paul Benson cited mental incompetence when
Barry Myrtle Poor Bear from testifying about how FBI agents
coerced her into swearing falsely in three affidavits to obtain
(01:57):
Leonard's extradition from Canada.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
It certainly looks like she was just of no use
to them anymore for the purposes of Leonard's trial in
March nineteen seventy seven, where the Beds once again were
up to their same dirty tricks trying to influence the jury.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Because the jurors were sequestered during Lennon's trial for their
own safety, they were under twenty four hour US Marshall protection.
And what we didn't know was that they were transported
to the courtroom from their hotel, back to their hotel
for lunch, et cetera, back and forth the end of
the day, and the windows of this bus were taped
up because they were told that this would prevent them
(02:33):
from being.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Shot at by snipers. Wow, and there were sniper teams
very visible on the roof.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Those snipers were FBI agents, but the alleged threat was
from AIM and their supporters.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
The way the jurors came out of the building, the
bus was parked about fifteen feet from the entrance. The
door bursts open, a team of marshalls come and fan out,
and then they ushered these jurors in fast as they
can so they don't get shot between the building and
the bus. You do this four times a day for
six weeks, even have an impression.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
That's like psychological warfare.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
It was all about creating a climate of fear and terror.
They did it in the courtroom. We had twenty five
marshalls in the courtroom at all times. He had agents
sitting behind us with submachine guns and cases.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
In addition to the terror tactics, the prosecution team of
Lynn Crooks, Evan Holtman and Robert Sikma were able to
take the self defense claim off the table with the
execution narrative, which in turn barred witness testimony about the
Goon Squad's betterally funded terror campaign that made self defense
in gun battle the norm on Pine Ridge. And now
(03:41):
but Jimmy Eagle also out of the picture. They needed
witnesses to place Leonard in the car allegedly being chased
by the agents.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
And suddenly a young man, Michael Anderson, who is fifteen
years old at the time, in every statement he had
given previously said he was in the camp when the
firefight started, suddenly was quarter mile away and on the
roof of one of the houses and watched a vehicle
drive in, chased by the two agents. And it wasn't
a red pickup like the agents described, but it was
(04:11):
a red and white van like they found up in
the camp and had been seen up by the houses
at one point. So Mike's telling the story and he
describes it as the agents following an orange pickup. And
the prosecutor says, now, when you say orange pickup, do
you mean a red and white van?
Speaker 2 (04:28):
And he said yes, that day the agents had clearly
radioed in describing a red pickup like the one that
Jimmy Eagle drove. But since the charges against Jimmy had
been dropped the narrative became Leonard in his red and
white van. Anderson also said that he'd come running back
to the campground to grab a rifle and saw Leonard
(04:50):
with an AR fifteen. On cross examination, Mike Anderson admitted
that his charges relating to the exploding car in Wichita
were dropped in a exchange for this testimony. In a
similar vein Wilford, Draper admitted that he'd been threatened with
indictment for the murder himself, so he agreed to testify
that the group had knowledge of the FBI agent's cars
(05:13):
on the day prior and that he had seen Leonard
with an AR fifteen. Norman Brown flat out refused to
repeat his testimony from the Butler Robadu trial that he'd
seen the Trio near the agent's car. He said, quote,
it was the agents who said that I saw them
end quote, and he added that he too have been
(05:33):
threatened with the indictment.
Speaker 5 (05:35):
Yes, the witnesses testified that their family was threatened, their
mothers are threatened, and they were threatened of course, and
tried to rechat any kind of statement that they were
forced to make before. So it was no evidence. Nobody
said I was shooting at anybody or killing anybody.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
No one witnessed anyone allegedly performing this execution on these
two agents. And the medical evidence was that the agents
were shot by a high velocity rifle at close range,
and that Agent Williams had a defensive wound on his
right hand, and that the gun must have been pressed
against it before firing through his hand and his head.
(06:15):
But strangely, there was no mention whatsoever of the burn
wounds that are associated with close range gunshots. I'm gonna
pause on that for a second. And both bodies, by
the way, were discovered face down, which does not fit
the scenario they described. But the theory was accepted at
face value. And then came the ballistics.
Speaker 6 (06:37):
Essentially, it boiled down the two things. Number One, there
was one and only one AR fifteen that was present
at the Jumping bull compound at that time according to
the witness testimony, and that Peltier had been seen with
an AR fifteen, and therefore the wichita Ar fifteen was
(07:02):
Leonard Peltier's AR fifteen. Now, look, there a few problems
with that. Number One is there's no proof that the
wichita AR fifteen found in the car months later was
ever at the Jumping Bull compound. And more important, there
was evidence that the government was aware of that there
were numerous Ar fifteens present at that time that were
(07:26):
firing bullets. Because they found other shellcasings at the scene,
and they found other bullets at the scene, that information
was suppressed. The second thing that was crucial was that
the very firearms expert who testified for the government had
sent a teletype while the investigation was still going on,
(07:50):
saying that the shellcasing that was found in the agent's
car did not match the wichita Ar fifteen. It was
from a different gun. And this was based on a
firing pin test.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
If you recall from Part two of our coverage, we
discussed the mechanics of a semi automatic weapon and how
although this type of analysis is best suited for excluding
weapons rather than matchmaking, a firing pin test is the
most reliable for identifying an individual weapon, while an extractor
(08:26):
mark can merely identify things like make or model. The
FBI firearm analyst Evan Hodge testified that the casing had
been loaded and extracted from the wichita Ar fifteen. This
is why it was so important for both There to
have been only one AR fifteen and that it be
placed in Leonard's possession. However, there were other AR fifteens,
(08:51):
and when they'd received the fire damaged AR fifteen from Wichita,
the bolt mechanism was removed and was placed in a
different AR fifteen. According to an October nineteen seventy five teletype,
a firing pin test of that Wichita AR fifteen was
negative for a match with the casing from Agent Cohler's trunk.
Speaker 6 (09:13):
That was never given over to the defense. Had those
two pieces of information been given to the defense, obviously
the defense would have been in a position to undermine
the entire case against Leonard Peltier, and make no mistake
about it. The case was presented as Leonard Peltier being
(09:34):
the person wielding the Wichita AR fifteen who walked up
to both agents as they lay wounded and executed them
both with one shell casing being discarded into the agent's car.
That was the theory of the trial. That was what
the jury believed, and that's how the conviction arose.
Speaker 5 (09:57):
A prosecutor, he made a stake at the closing arguments
that I was a cold bloody killer executioner and was effective,
I guess.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
They added that the witnesses who undermined their own testimony
perhaps should have been tried to, calling aim a blood
crazed bunch, and however undermined that testimony, was it aligned
with what appeared to be scientific evidence related to this
one shell casing that may or may not have been
ejected into this agent's trunk. When you think about it,
(10:30):
with all of the other lies, it's hard to know
whether to believe this or any of this so called evidence.
But nonetheless, on the fateful day of April eighteenth, nineteen
seventy seven, Leonard Peltier was convicted on two counts a
first degree murder.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
The clerk of the court told us, Judge Benson's not
going to give you no more than thirty years. I
would get out in fifteen. I take some of that,
but I was so fucking upset that I wrote a
very strong anti government statement. I condemned the court, I
condemned a judge and the whole system with such disregard
(11:08):
for the constitution, attempts at exterminating us. And I read
that just before he sentenced me, and he gave me
two life sentences. So if I had to keep my
mouth shut. I probably would have been out after fifteen years,
but I was just so fucking angry that I just
couldn't control myself. Right after I was convicted, the elders
(11:44):
came up to the railing there and said, we want
you to know that we will fight for you for
the rest of our lives if you're still in prison,
and our children will fight for you for the rest
of their lives, and if you're still in there, our
grandkids will fight for you. They sent me to marry
in Illinois's the harshest president I had at that time.
(12:06):
It took the place of Alcatraz. They put me in
a hole there and so that they can find it.
I went to a hearing about thirty days later, and
the captain there sentenced me to a century deprivation cell indefinitely.
It's complete darkness. They only got one blanket to sleep on,
(12:29):
and the only time you get light is when they
opened the food slot. People come out of their completely nuts.
Some people never come out of there. I was supposed
to die in her I said a lot of prayers
to Uncle Tunka, get your man to do that's the
great spirit, and I just made my mind up you
ain't going to break me. But my lawyers and other
(12:50):
people were fighting. They finally got a hearing in the
Supreme Court said you cannot re sentence people to these
type of cells he's been setting and beside that that
soll you got there is illegal.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
At this point, Leonard's appeals had been picked up by
Dino and Bob's attorney, William Kuntzler, and this small victory
over cruel and unusual punishment came along with the denial
of his direct appeal, at which time Leonard was transferred
to another facility, Lompoc.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
And when I got there, I couldn't believe it. I mean,
this was so.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Many holes, holes in the wall.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
No, I mean to escape, like the fencing and lower security.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
And some of the towers wasn't occupied, and I was
looking around here. I said, wow. So first opportunity I got,
we went out during the night, made it across the
fence and they were shooting at us by then, and
Dallas Thundershield had his arms up surrendering and they shot
him in the back. I was able to escape, and
(13:53):
I was gone five days out in the desert.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
And made it to Santa Maria California.
Speaker 5 (13:58):
Yes, miles from the prison. I was heading from Mexico.
I was going out there to Dickaraka and I was
sitting under this tree, and I haven't looked down to
the lower grounds, and I seen this garden and I thought, gee,
that it would be nice to sit up here and
eat the melon or whatever else I could do. So
I go down to this garden and all sudden, this
(14:20):
guy starts shooting at me. I put my arms up.
He got close enough to me where I snatched the
gun out of his hand, and then he said, I
suppose you're going to kill me now. And I looked
at him. I said, what the fuck you tried to
kill me, fucking asshole, excuse my language. But he got
all panicky now he was crying and everything, and no,
(14:40):
I wasn't just trying to chase you out of my garden.
And I said, you're that and I just said I
can't do this. And I told him, I said, well,
don't be running calling the cops. Let me get away
from here, okay, okay, but call the cops soon as
he could. I guess they could come all from all directions.
When they had me on the ground. This deputy sheriff
(15:01):
was putting on handcuffs. I mean, the FBI agent came
and put that barrel right here, and he said, your
son him a bit. You killed two of my friends.
I'm gonna blow your fucking brains up. And I just
looked at him as well, do it, fucking brave, asked
ole motherfucker. Now that I'm handcuffed and everything, I said,
do it shoot And the deputy sheriff we started shaking
(15:23):
on my back and he said, I'm not going to
be part of no killing. So they must have been
talking about it to see me kill me.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Leonard got seven more years for the escape and weapons possession.
By this time, every new class of FBI agents was
being indoctrinated with the image of Leonard Peltier as their boogeyman.
And meanwhile, in Canada, this a listener general, a guy
named Warren Almond, began to make noise about how the
FBI and prosecutors had presented Myrtle Forbear's perjured Affidavid's at
(15:55):
Leonard's extradition.
Speaker 5 (15:56):
Hearing the Native people in Canada forced him to do
an investigation on the extradition. Then they sealed it for
forty years. Warren Allman was very upset about it. He
took him another year to get in there and read
this investigation report, and he found a letter in there
from the Justice Department here in the United States that said,
(16:18):
if you put in this investigation and release it, we
would hold the fifty five million dollars that we're going
to send you to the Joint Agricultural Laboratory.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Well, with Warren Allman's efforts, newtered Leonardstein also exhausted the
Myrtle poor Bear evidence.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
In post conviction on the Myrtle porbar thing, the judge
asked Evan Haltman, we don't understand how anyone could continue
to extract information from this witness, because it's quite obvious
she was not a real witness. So Haltman said, your Honor,
I had nothing to do with her, and when I
read her AFFI David, I knew there was not once
(16:59):
entil of truth. A few years later we find a
document he had flew into Rapid City, and prosecutor that
was representing the United States and Canada flew in from
Canada and they wrote her third affidavit.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
So Evan Holtman's deception was once again not discovered until
it was too late. And around this time is when
Ron Kobe got involved.
Speaker 6 (17:24):
When I was a law student way back in nineteen
eighty two, I started interning for William Kunstler, and at
that point he was very deeply involved in trying to
secure a new trial for Leonard Peltier, and so I
started working on that case almost immediately and continued when
(17:45):
I was finally admitted to the bar in nineteen eighty four.
Kunstler had obtained new information that he believed was the
key to getting Leonard a new trial.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
So here we had ballistics evidence I mentioned before the
agent gets on the stand as well. We can't definitively
do a firing pin test, but we can do an
extractor mark test, and in fact there's a match. And
for lawyers, if you see a word in a government
document that refers to another document, you got to go
after it.
Speaker 6 (18:14):
I think it was a freedom of information. After request,
Kunstler learned of the existence of this teletype from Agent Hodge,
which had been suppressed.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
We asked for two October second teletypes that we had
not gotten. Not only could that damaged AR fifteen from Kansas,
at least the one that they used to test could
produce a firing pin test, but those teletypes revealed that
there was no match whatsoever whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
In previous episodes, we've covered the FBI Crime Lab and
the culture of misconduct, false testimony, and manipulating evidence that
was exposed in the mid nineties by a whistleblower named
Frederick Whitehurst, who came forward at great personal and professional risk.
We're going to link to our coverage of Elmer Daniels,
who was interviewed by fellow Xandery death Row Exunery by
(19:05):
the way, John Huffington, both of whom had been victims
of false testimony from the FBI Prime Lab, and it
appears that this culture of misconduct was present during Leonard's trial,
as Evan Hodge testified that his test casings and the
casing from Kohler's trunk were loaded and unloaded from that
particular rifle, while this October nineteen seventy five firing pin
(19:29):
test said otherwise.
Speaker 6 (19:31):
And based on that, I filed emotion for a new trial.
There was a very extensive evidentiary hearing where agent Evan
Hodge tried to say he didn't mean to suggest that
he was talking about the shellcasing found in the agent's car.
(19:51):
He was testing other shellcasings, and it's like, really the
most important piece of evidence in the case. And you
send a teletype about other shellcasings belonging to other ar fifteens,
which the FBI claimed weren't even at the scene. Made
(20:12):
no sense, clearly a lie. But something very interesting happened
in the course of the argument on that appeal. The
government was not convinced they were going to win. The
Eighth Circuit was skeptical, or at least made skeptical sounds,
(20:33):
and so during oral argument the government said, look, we
may not be able to prove that in fact, it
was Peltier who fired the fatal bullets at close range.
Speaker 5 (20:46):
He said, your honor, I want you to know the
government doesn't know who the shooter is nor what participation
Leonard Peltier may have had in it.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
The government switched from Leonard doing it to no, no, no,
Leonard was just a nat in.
Speaker 6 (21:00):
A better That was an amazing concession, because for over
a decade the government and the FBI had been relentlessly
saying that Leonard Peltier walked up to two wounded agents
executed them at point blank range and suddenly the government saying, well, okay,
(21:21):
maybe not, but he was shooting at them. Nonetheless, the
judge denied the motion, and on appeal the Eighth Circuit
said it would possibly have helped Peltier's defense to have
this teletype. It would have helped impeach the agent. It
would have helped you establish that there were other ar
fifteens at the scene. But we're not convinced under the
(21:45):
Brady standard that this was sufficiently material to create a
reasonable possibility that a jury would have come to a
different conclusion had they heard this evidence.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
In what Okay, So this Brady violation destroys the alleged
evidence that Leonard had executed two wounded FBI agents in
cold blood, leaving him, as it was now framed, as
an alleged aider and a better.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
And that's where then it became an issue because wait
a minute, if he was just an aider and a better,
then how could the judge deny him the same defense
that Daryl Butler and Bob Robberty you had where they
were able to show that they had reasons to act
in self defense on that day.
Speaker 6 (22:32):
So we go back into court once again using the
government's concession is a basis for a new trial, and
again the Eighth Circuit manages to affirm the conviction, pointing
out that in the indictment Peltier was named as an
aider and a better so in theory the conviction could
(22:55):
be upheld, even though that was not the case the government.
Speaker 7 (23:00):
What up.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Leonard?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
All these years decades in prison, forty nine years and
eleven days, How did you manage to find hope inside
those walls all those years.
Speaker 5 (23:24):
I didn't join the rest of inmates. I didn't go
into what they usually do, drugs and drinking and things
like that. I kind of went into my own little group.
We played handball, worked out in the weights, and paint.
I went into art room and I decided I was
going to develop my artwork, and I went to school
(23:45):
for a while, helped Peter Mansson write In the Spirit
of Crazy Horse, and then I eventually wrote my own book,
Prison Writings, and In the Spirit of Crazy Horse went
to number one best seller in the world. The FBI
filed twenty million dollar lawsuit. Bill Jankel, the governor of
South Dakota, filed a twenty five million dollar losson They
(24:07):
held it off. The bookshelves for eight and a half years,
cost us two and a half million dollars to defend ourselves, and.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
I hope everyone will order recovery of that book. But
you had on your side, not just Pope Francis Art
Bishop too, to Mother, Teresa Nelson, Mandela Muhammad, Ali.
Speaker 5 (24:23):
Marlon Brando, Robert Redford, Peter Coyote.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
The Dali, Lama, Coreta, Scott.
Speaker 5 (24:29):
King, Santana, Grateful Dead, Willian.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
Nelson, Johnny Depp.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Of course Rage Against the Machine.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
I know a lot of gen xers and millennials like
myself were too young to know about Leonard when the
case happened back in nineteen seventy five. Some of us
weren't born yet. However, a lot of people heard about
Leonard with a music video for Freedom by Rage Against
the Machine was released on MTV back when that was
still a thing. If you went to a rage show,
(24:59):
especially support of that album, you heard a lot about Leonard.
And that was nineteen ninety four, and his cause gained
a lot of political momentum toward the end of the
Clinton administration, not just because of Rage Against the Machine,
but also because a former FBI agent turned Congressman Don
Edwards joined the cause as well.
Speaker 5 (25:19):
Don Edwards, he was a supporter of mine and he
was doing an interview and they asked him and they said,
why are you supporting someone that was convicted of killing
two year agents? He said, I worked there, I know
what they did to Leonard. And there's others. There's probably
about ten more FBI agents that came forward and said
(25:41):
they don't use this term, but it meant they manufactured
evidence and tortured witnesses and things like that.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
So the political will was primed for Clinton's final days
in office as a team of people, including Bruce Ellison,
advocated passionately for Leonard's clemency.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
And we got some very interesting contacts from some Hollywood
folks who had regular contacts with the Clintons. We met
with White House counsel and chief of staff. We had
a really good meeting.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Was that Bruce Lindsay.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
Bruce Lindsay was one of the participants.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Yes, And leading up to this, about several weeks before
Senator Dashel from South Dakota was the Senate majority leader
at the time, took William Janklow, who.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Was Leonard, told us about his early life too. He's
a reprehensible character must bartant.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Yeah, he was basically a convicting tribal court a child, right.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
If you remember we talked about Bill Jenklow's privileged existence,
his alleged serial rape ignored not only by law enforcement
but by South Dakota voters, paving the way to Janklow
becoming Attorney general Governor of South Dakota twice, as well
as his path to Congress. And after all this time
(26:57):
for Leonard and Ames audacity to RaSE Gencida Eagle Deer's allegations.
During Janklow's run for AG in nineteen seventy four, Jinklow
actively lobbied against Leonard's clemency. In the year two.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Thousand, Dashel leads Janklo in to meet with Clinton. Clinton
was told that South Dakota senator would lose the next election.
It was going to cost the Democrats the Senate if
he pardoned Peltier, which is bullshit.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
But we have this meeting the next week.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
This is on like a Friday, a week before Clinton's leaving.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
Office, and it goes great.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
And in fact, I was asked to draft up a
bunch of bullet points for Clinton to say at a
press conference. Announcing the clemency, and then on Wednesday of
the following week, Clinton's lawyers, according to the Hollywood People,
said that meeting on Wednesday was about whether Clinton was
going to be indicted for perjury in front of the
(27:53):
grand jury, white Water grand Jury, Monica Lewinsky grand jury,
and other things.
Speaker 4 (27:58):
And I've been through lots of.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Of times that they do questioning and work out deals
and all this stuff. And basically, while I don't know
the exact words, Leonard's name came up four times during
the day's discussions, and basically Clinton got the idea and
he was told, look, if you grant this clemency, anytime
you want your huousand two hundred thousand dollars speaking engagements
wherever you are in the country of the world, that's
(28:21):
going to get picketed by cops and we're going to
make it difficulty you to earn your money.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
Well, you can do nothing, and he did nothing.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
By this time, the Supreme Court had also ignored Leonard's
case despite the blatant material Brady violation, and so the
legal battle began to focus on obtaining an estimated one
hundred thousand undisclosed FBI documents through Foyer requests to see
what else they could find.
Speaker 6 (28:46):
Leonard went through a number of lawyers who were fighting
this issue, and he re enlisted me. I think back
in two thousand and six, back in the o's we
got a lot of documents, and a lot of documents
we didn't yet, and a lot of documents we still
haven't received.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
But nothing of newt was handed over. Meanwhile, as sentencing
law went before nineteen eighty four, despite his double life sentence,
Leonard became eligible for parole after twenty five years plus
the seven years he'd gotten for the escape and weapon possession,
and his lawyer made a strong presentation that was summarily
(29:24):
denied for an additional fifteen years, during which time they
lobbied the Obama administration twice to no avail, and Leonard
was denied parole again at the Parole board in twenty
twenty four, with just a few months left in the
Biden administration.
Speaker 6 (29:42):
Administrations, far more sympathetic to Native American issues, refused to
grant him clemency. Every judicial remedy had been exhausted. I mean,
there's two ways to look at the legal fight. One
way is that ongoing consistent legal bans adults shipping away
at the prosecution's case helped enable the mass movement that
(30:07):
eventually succeeded in winning clemency for Peltier. That's what I
choose to believe. There is another position you could take,
which is, despite hundreds of thousands of lawyer hours being
poured into the case, nothing that any of the dozens
of lawyers did accomplished a single damn thing for Leonard.
Speaker 5 (30:31):
But my people have never given up on me. That
was very, very encouraging.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
You know, Leonard's long had such international recognition and efforts
at justice put forth and that have always been ignored.
But the combination this time worked. You know, all the
tribal leaders got together. Secretary Headland spoke to Biden a
couple of times privately. There was a lot of people
who were just making a lot of things happen. And
(30:59):
then Tilson and Holly really just did a tremendous job.
And so anyway, somewhere in this mix, Biden decides to
do the right thing.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
So Holly mccaro and Nick Tilson, from an advocacy group
called Indian Collective, along with a former federal judge named
Kevin Sharp, petitioned the Biden administration for clemency. And there's
a documentary called pre Leonard Peltier that we're going to
link in the episode description. I highly recommend it. By
the way, the moment the news came through was caught
on video. It gave me full body jills watching that
(31:30):
and Holly mccaro, she was actually there for this incredible moment.
Speaker 7 (31:35):
On the day that Leonard was granted clemency, I was
in the parking lot in Florida. He was in Coleman,
the Federal Max. We had told Leonard that we had
had some strong indications and were feeling very positive, but
again we had to see it in writing because of
what happened with Clinton, where they told him he's on
the list, then they wake up and he wasn't on
(31:56):
the list. So we expected it to be on Monday morning.
So we're in the parking lot. We prayed, we sang
our songs, we smudged, and I was in very close
contact with several folks within the White House while we
were waiting. Fred Dejarlie, who's a spiritual leader. He was
with us and he said, there's an eagle over there,
and I didn't know that there were bald eagles in
(32:18):
Florida that far south, and we all looked and there
were two eagles circling above us. You could hear them whistling.
That was maybe then around eleven fifteen am and sixteen
seventeen eighteen, we were hitting refreshed on White House dot
Gov over and over. I was too Yeah, if I'd
never have to hit refresh again, it'll be too soon.
But I had already begun receiving notes from friends and
(32:40):
family and folks who know I had been working in
advocacy for Leonard and saying, oh, I'm really sorry, because
there was already video of the president leaving the White
House and heading for the Capitol on inauguration day there.
So I think it was eleven forty four when the
announcement came through and we celebrated in the parking lot there,
and that announcement it was just that he had commuted
(33:02):
his sentence. We didn't receive the detail with the home
confinement or the date of February eighteenth until a couple
of hours later, and Leonard called me, and almost exactly
an hour later, and he said, well, my dear, I've
been on pins and needles. I've been up since midnight.
He said, did you do it? And I said, yes, Leonard,
President Biden granted you. Clemency was sixteen minutes left in
(33:24):
his administration. He said, did you see it in writing?
And I said, I saw it in writing. And then
Leonard said, so it's real, then it's real. I said, yes,
it's real. You'll be going home.
Speaker 5 (33:35):
I didn't really believe that I got it even after
the war and called me down, gave me a copy
of this commendation and everything, and I said, that is
all a joke, man, And so I really didn't believe
it even very few days later. I just you're going
to come tell me at any moment, so bullshit. And
I were playing games or whatever else. So that's what
(33:56):
went through my mind.
Speaker 6 (33:58):
And honestly, I don't think if anybody saw that coming.
I think that most of us, if we're going to
be honest with ourselves, never thought we would see the
day that Leonard would walk out of prison alive. And
it was just ironic. It took a man with absolutely
(34:19):
no political future left to him to summon up the
political will to go ahead and sign that paper.
Speaker 5 (34:27):
Got in a car with Holly and Nick and hell
out of.
Speaker 7 (34:31):
Here, we had a ribbon shirt, we had new moccasins
for him as he began this new path forward, and
then we had a ceremony to help him leave some
of this behind him and flew him home to Turtle Mountain.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Leonard is finally out of prison, but he's still under
house arrest for the terms of his clemency.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Which come on house arrest after what we've heard here.
But at least Leonard is finally able to breathe free air,
see family and friends, and see a doctor outside of prison.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
After fifty years of medical neglect, he is in dire
need of medical attention at the age of eighty. We
will link ways to donate in the episode description here,
as well as other action steps, And of course we
asked Leonard and Bruce what else people can do.
Speaker 5 (35:23):
I need my story told again and again and again
because hopefully it will help my people.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
This is a message for people lawyers who I want
to encourage young lawyers to get involved. But that is
you've got to remember that this is a war, and
it's a real war, and they fight it in different ways,
and yes there are risks, because we know the American
government works in a way that they never go after
people for political reasons.
Speaker 4 (35:51):
They're always going after them because they're criminals.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Well, when Jed Cahover passed away to read a book
by Sanford Hunger about the FBI the POSTI, one of
the things he mentions in there was to cover that
up and make it legal. They entered instructions that if
you decided to actually target a person, you have to
put in some crime that you believe that you're actually investigating,
so that whatever the result is, it's not because they're
(36:16):
trying to defend their people they want to protect the
land from a hazard this pipeline. It's because they're engaged
in criminal activities.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
And thus we have the world that.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
We have today right where we're going to watch people
around it up. There's always going to be some law
that they're going to try and claim. Now having a
little problem with the immigration stuff, but really they're going
to pass laws in Congress. They're going to do what
they did in South Dakota and a lot of other
places where what they call anti riot booster laws where
they essentially criminalize nonviolent civil disobedience as terrorism. The struggle
(36:51):
to protect the earth, to protect the people in terms
of having a livable world and a sustainable world and
a free world. That struggle is now reach out another height.
There's renewed Indian activism and the government is going after
people now, so we have like the next wave which
is coming, and men like Leonard Peltier and beIN Pular though,
they're the ones that will help and are helping to
(37:14):
inspire the young people and give a direction of discipline
and love and honor and respect. It's been an honor
of mine despite what I have gone through, and I
got a lot of messages for lawyers who want to
get involved in this particular work. Be prepared for anything,
because you get treated like the people you're representing. They
literally think you're part of it. And to some extent,
(37:36):
I honorably became part of that. Because this is the
real world. These are things that affect people's daily ability
to survive.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
We have a tradition here at Wrongful Conviction. It's called
closing arguments, and it's where I first of all, thank
you again from the bottom of my heart for being
here and sharing this story with us. And then I'm
just going to kick back in my chair and listen
to anything else you feel has been left unsaid.
Speaker 7 (38:02):
I think it is so important to tell this story.
It's about injustice, eventual justice. When we share this story
with audiences like yours, it helps us ensure that this
will never happen again, but it also lets us know
that the work continues. Many of the things that inspired
the birth of the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis, and
that inspired Dino and Leonard and other leaders of the
(38:25):
movement back then, those conditions exist today. Their activism and
voices brought us to the table in the nineteen seventies
and inspired landmark legislation that we all rely on today
to protect American Indian rights. But some of those conditions
exist today, and I think Leonard looking forward has an
important platform and role of leadership in making sure that
the injustice doesn't happen again, but that we are also
(38:47):
always making the noise to protect our people.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
In these dangerous and threatening times, it is important for
us to remember that we can either go as sheep,
or we can stand up. And if we stand up,
and especially stand up for those who were being threatened
by aspects of our system that's designed to stop exposure
(39:11):
the truth the reality of too many people in this
country and we figure out how to do it together
and do it with love. But most importantly, there's too
many people who been wrongfully convicted and who are still
in prison, and anyone who can do anything to help,
information whatever, don't forget those people.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
You just never know what.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Might happen if you keep trying, and you keep sending
all those prayers and strength and love to those who
are decision making, it's keeping that person strong and healthy.
So I guess that's what I'd say, because it's only
together we can do this, and we can't.
Speaker 5 (39:49):
I can't express how I'm actually feeling about this freedom.
Like I said, I've never expected it. I didn't think
it was going to happen. I thought it was going
to in prison. But it isn't just about Leonard Peltier.
It's about the struggle. It's about what they did or
try to do to us Natives. They tried to exterminate us.
(40:13):
We were we're not supposed to exist no more. We
were supposed to be gone by nineteen eighty five, that's
when the extermination policy was supposed to be completed. So
for me to be able to fight for my people
and sacrifice is an honor. I would not hesitate to
fight for them again, even though I went through fifty
(40:35):
years in prison. It's just something that was honor for
me to fight for my people, and it's honor for
me to be able to talk to them now, to
all the people around the world that supported me. It's
something I can't really express how grateful I am, how
honored I am that they would put me in this position,
and I'm just very grateful for everything everybody's doing.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for
Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Kleiber.
The music in this production was supplied by three time
(41:25):
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
(41:46):
by the individuals featured in this show are their own
and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good
Previously on our coverage of the wrongful conviction of Leonard Peltier,
Federal prosecutors used false evidence to extradite Leonard Peltier from
Canada to the United States, where his code efendants had
just been acquitted on the grounds of self defense for
the June nineteen seventy five fatal shooting deaths of two
FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation. So in preparation
(00:27):
for Leonard's trial, they traded a premeditated ambush narrative for
one claiming that after the agents pursued Leonard onto Jumping
Bull Ranch to serve a warrant, a firefight had ensued,
and when the agents were wounded, the beds claimed that
Leonard approached them with an AR fifteen, which ejected a
shell casing into the agent's trunk as he executed them
(00:50):
in cold blood, but hidden evidence said otherwise, this is
wrongful conviction. You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for
Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction
(01:22):
for the final episode in our coverage of Leonard Peltier,
where once again I'm joined by you know him and
you love him, Ben Bolin from the podcast Stuff They
Don't Want You to Know.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Thank you, Jason. We'll pick up on this story where
we left off when the federal prosecutors have been granted
a change of venue from Cedar Rapids, Iowa to Fargo,
North Dakota, where Judge Paul Benson cited mental incompetence when
Barry Myrtle Poor Bear from testifying about how FBI agents
coerced her into swearing falsely in three affidavits to obtain
(01:57):
Leonard's extradition from Canada.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
It certainly looks like she was just of no use
to them anymore for the purposes of Leonard's trial in
March nineteen seventy seven, where the Beds once again were
up to their same dirty tricks trying to influence the jury.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Because the jurors were sequestered during Lennon's trial for their
own safety, they were under twenty four hour US Marshall protection.
And what we didn't know was that they were transported
to the courtroom from their hotel, back to their hotel
for lunch, et cetera, back and forth the end of
the day, and the windows of this bus were taped
up because they were told that this would prevent them
(02:33):
from being.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
Shot at by snipers. Wow, and there were sniper teams
very visible on the roof.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Those snipers were FBI agents, but the alleged threat was
from AIM and their supporters.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
The way the jurors came out of the building, the
bus was parked about fifteen feet from the entrance. The
door bursts open, a team of marshalls come and fan out,
and then they ushered these jurors in fast as they
can so they don't get shot between the building and
the bus. You do this four times a day for
six weeks, even have an impression.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
That's like psychological warfare.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
It was all about creating a climate of fear and terror.
They did it in the courtroom. We had twenty five
marshalls in the courtroom at all times. He had agents
sitting behind us with submachine guns and cases.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
In addition to the terror tactics, the prosecution team of
Lynn Crooks, Evan Holtman and Robert Sikma were able to
take the self defense claim off the table with the
execution narrative, which in turn barred witness testimony about the
Goon Squad's betterally funded terror campaign that made self defense
in gun battle the norm on Pine Ridge. And now
(03:41):
but Jimmy Eagle also out of the picture. They needed
witnesses to place Leonard in the car allegedly being chased
by the agents.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
And suddenly a young man, Michael Anderson, who is fifteen
years old at the time, in every statement he had
given previously said he was in the camp when the
firefight started, suddenly was quarter mile away and on the
roof of one of the houses and watched a vehicle
drive in, chased by the two agents. And it wasn't
a red pickup like the agents described, but it was
(04:11):
a red and white van like they found up in
the camp and had been seen up by the houses
at one point. So Mike's telling the story and he
describes it as the agents following an orange pickup. And
the prosecutor says, now, when you say orange pickup, do
you mean a red and white van?
Speaker 2 (04:28):
And he said yes, that day the agents had clearly
radioed in describing a red pickup like the one that
Jimmy Eagle drove. But since the charges against Jimmy had
been dropped the narrative became Leonard in his red and
white van. Anderson also said that he'd come running back
to the campground to grab a rifle and saw Leonard
(04:50):
with an AR fifteen. On cross examination, Mike Anderson admitted
that his charges relating to the exploding car in Wichita
were dropped in a exchange for this testimony. In a
similar vein Wilford, Draper admitted that he'd been threatened with
indictment for the murder himself, so he agreed to testify
that the group had knowledge of the FBI agent's cars
(05:13):
on the day prior and that he had seen Leonard
with an AR fifteen. Norman Brown flat out refused to
repeat his testimony from the Butler Robadu trial that he'd
seen the Trio near the agent's car. He said, quote,
it was the agents who said that I saw them
end quote, and he added that he too have been
(05:33):
threatened with the indictment.
Speaker 5 (05:35):
Yes, the witnesses testified that their family was threatened, their
mothers are threatened, and they were threatened of course, and
tried to rechat any kind of statement that they were
forced to make before. So it was no evidence. Nobody
said I was shooting at anybody or killing anybody.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
No one witnessed anyone allegedly performing this execution on these
two agents. And the medical evidence was that the agents
were shot by a high velocity rifle at close range,
and that Agent Williams had a defensive wound on his
right hand, and that the gun must have been pressed
against it before firing through his hand and his head.
(06:15):
But strangely, there was no mention whatsoever of the burn
wounds that are associated with close range gunshots. I'm gonna
pause on that for a second. And both bodies, by
the way, were discovered face down, which does not fit
the scenario they described. But the theory was accepted at
face value. And then came the ballistics.
Speaker 6 (06:37):
Essentially, it boiled down the two things. Number One, there
was one and only one AR fifteen that was present
at the Jumping bull compound at that time according to
the witness testimony, and that Peltier had been seen with
an AR fifteen, and therefore the wichita Ar fifteen was
(07:02):
Leonard Peltier's AR fifteen. Now, look, there a few problems
with that. Number One is there's no proof that the
wichita AR fifteen found in the car months later was
ever at the Jumping Bull compound. And more important, there
was evidence that the government was aware of that there
were numerous Ar fifteens present at that time that were
(07:26):
firing bullets. Because they found other shellcasings at the scene,
and they found other bullets at the scene, that information
was suppressed. The second thing that was crucial was that
the very firearms expert who testified for the government had
sent a teletype while the investigation was still going on,
(07:50):
saying that the shellcasing that was found in the agent's
car did not match the wichita Ar fifteen. It was
from a different gun. And this was based on a
firing pin test.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
If you recall from Part two of our coverage, we
discussed the mechanics of a semi automatic weapon and how
although this type of analysis is best suited for excluding
weapons rather than matchmaking, a firing pin test is the
most reliable for identifying an individual weapon, while an extractor
(08:26):
mark can merely identify things like make or model. The
FBI firearm analyst Evan Hodge testified that the casing had
been loaded and extracted from the wichita Ar fifteen. This
is why it was so important for both There to
have been only one AR fifteen and that it be
placed in Leonard's possession. However, there were other AR fifteens,
(08:51):
and when they'd received the fire damaged AR fifteen from Wichita,
the bolt mechanism was removed and was placed in a
different AR fifteen. According to an October nineteen seventy five teletype,
a firing pin test of that Wichita AR fifteen was
negative for a match with the casing from Agent Cohler's trunk.
Speaker 6 (09:13):
That was never given over to the defense. Had those
two pieces of information been given to the defense, obviously
the defense would have been in a position to undermine
the entire case against Leonard Peltier, and make no mistake
about it. The case was presented as Leonard Peltier being
(09:34):
the person wielding the Wichita AR fifteen who walked up
to both agents as they lay wounded and executed them
both with one shell casing being discarded into the agent's car.
That was the theory of the trial. That was what
the jury believed, and that's how the conviction arose.
Speaker 5 (09:57):
A prosecutor, he made a stake at the closing arguments
that I was a cold bloody killer executioner and was effective,
I guess.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
They added that the witnesses who undermined their own testimony
perhaps should have been tried to, calling aim a blood
crazed bunch, and however undermined that testimony, was it aligned
with what appeared to be scientific evidence related to this
one shell casing that may or may not have been
ejected into this agent's trunk. When you think about it,
(10:30):
with all of the other lies, it's hard to know
whether to believe this or any of this so called evidence.
But nonetheless, on the fateful day of April eighteenth, nineteen
seventy seven, Leonard Peltier was convicted on two counts a
first degree murder.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
The clerk of the court told us, Judge Benson's not
going to give you no more than thirty years. I
would get out in fifteen. I take some of that,
but I was so fucking upset that I wrote a
very strong anti government statement. I condemned the court, I
condemned a judge and the whole system with such disregard
(11:08):
for the constitution, attempts at exterminating us. And I read
that just before he sentenced me, and he gave me
two life sentences. So if I had to keep my
mouth shut. I probably would have been out after fifteen years,
but I was just so fucking angry that I just
couldn't control myself. Right after I was convicted, the elders
(11:44):
came up to the railing there and said, we want
you to know that we will fight for you for
the rest of our lives if you're still in prison,
and our children will fight for you for the rest
of their lives, and if you're still in there, our
grandkids will fight for you. They sent me to marry
in Illinois's the harshest president I had at that time.
(12:06):
It took the place of Alcatraz. They put me in
a hole there and so that they can find it.
I went to a hearing about thirty days later, and
the captain there sentenced me to a century deprivation cell indefinitely.
It's complete darkness. They only got one blanket to sleep on,
(12:29):
and the only time you get light is when they
opened the food slot. People come out of their completely nuts.
Some people never come out of there. I was supposed
to die in her I said a lot of prayers
to Uncle Tunka, get your man to do that's the
great spirit, and I just made my mind up you
ain't going to break me. But my lawyers and other
(12:50):
people were fighting. They finally got a hearing in the
Supreme Court said you cannot re sentence people to these
type of cells he's been setting and beside that that
soll you got there is illegal.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
At this point, Leonard's appeals had been picked up by
Dino and Bob's attorney, William Kuntzler, and this small victory
over cruel and unusual punishment came along with the denial
of his direct appeal, at which time Leonard was transferred
to another facility, Lompoc.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
And when I got there, I couldn't believe it. I mean,
this was so.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Many holes, holes in the wall.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
No, I mean to escape, like the fencing and lower security.
Speaker 5 (13:33):
And some of the towers wasn't occupied, and I was
looking around here. I said, wow. So first opportunity I got,
we went out during the night, made it across the
fence and they were shooting at us by then, and
Dallas Thundershield had his arms up surrendering and they shot
him in the back. I was able to escape, and
(13:53):
I was gone five days out in the desert.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
And made it to Santa Maria California.
Speaker 5 (13:58):
Yes, miles from the prison. I was heading from Mexico.
I was going out there to Dickaraka and I was
sitting under this tree, and I haven't looked down to
the lower grounds, and I seen this garden and I thought, gee,
that it would be nice to sit up here and
eat the melon or whatever else I could do. So
I go down to this garden and all sudden, this
(14:20):
guy starts shooting at me. I put my arms up.
He got close enough to me where I snatched the
gun out of his hand, and then he said, I
suppose you're going to kill me now. And I looked
at him. I said, what the fuck you tried to
kill me, fucking asshole, excuse my language. But he got
all panicky now he was crying and everything, and no,
(14:40):
I wasn't just trying to chase you out of my garden.
And I said, you're that and I just said I
can't do this. And I told him, I said, well,
don't be running calling the cops. Let me get away
from here, okay, okay, but call the cops soon as
he could. I guess they could come all from all directions.
When they had me on the ground. This deputy sheriff
(15:01):
was putting on handcuffs. I mean, the FBI agent came
and put that barrel right here, and he said, your
son him a bit. You killed two of my friends.
I'm gonna blow your fucking brains up. And I just
looked at him as well, do it, fucking brave, asked
ole motherfucker. Now that I'm handcuffed and everything, I said,
do it shoot And the deputy sheriff we started shaking
(15:23):
on my back and he said, I'm not going to
be part of no killing. So they must have been
talking about it to see me kill me.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
Leonard got seven more years for the escape and weapons possession.
By this time, every new class of FBI agents was
being indoctrinated with the image of Leonard Peltier as their boogeyman.
And meanwhile, in Canada, this a listener general, a guy
named Warren Almond, began to make noise about how the
FBI and prosecutors had presented Myrtle Forbear's perjured Affidavid's at
(15:55):
Leonard's extradition.
Speaker 5 (15:56):
Hearing the Native people in Canada forced him to do
an investigation on the extradition. Then they sealed it for
forty years. Warren Allman was very upset about it. He
took him another year to get in there and read
this investigation report, and he found a letter in there
from the Justice Department here in the United States that said,
(16:18):
if you put in this investigation and release it, we
would hold the fifty five million dollars that we're going
to send you to the Joint Agricultural Laboratory.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Well, with Warren Allman's efforts, newtered Leonardstein also exhausted the
Myrtle poor Bear evidence.
Speaker 5 (16:37):
In post conviction on the Myrtle porbar thing, the judge
asked Evan Haltman, we don't understand how anyone could continue
to extract information from this witness, because it's quite obvious
she was not a real witness. So Haltman said, your Honor,
I had nothing to do with her, and when I
read her AFFI David, I knew there was not once
(16:59):
entil of truth. A few years later we find a
document he had flew into Rapid City, and prosecutor that
was representing the United States and Canada flew in from
Canada and they wrote her third affidavit.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
So Evan Holtman's deception was once again not discovered until
it was too late. And around this time is when
Ron Kobe got involved.
Speaker 6 (17:24):
When I was a law student way back in nineteen
eighty two, I started interning for William Kunstler, and at
that point he was very deeply involved in trying to
secure a new trial for Leonard Peltier, and so I
started working on that case almost immediately and continued when
(17:45):
I was finally admitted to the bar in nineteen eighty four.
Kunstler had obtained new information that he believed was the
key to getting Leonard a new trial.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
So here we had ballistics evidence I mentioned before the
agent gets on the stand as well. We can't definitively
do a firing pin test, but we can do an
extractor mark test, and in fact there's a match. And
for lawyers, if you see a word in a government
document that refers to another document, you got to go
after it.
Speaker 6 (18:14):
I think it was a freedom of information. After request,
Kunstler learned of the existence of this teletype from Agent Hodge,
which had been suppressed.
Speaker 3 (18:26):
We asked for two October second teletypes that we had
not gotten. Not only could that damaged AR fifteen from Kansas,
at least the one that they used to test could
produce a firing pin test, but those teletypes revealed that
there was no match whatsoever whatsoever.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
In previous episodes, we've covered the FBI Crime Lab and
the culture of misconduct, false testimony, and manipulating evidence that
was exposed in the mid nineties by a whistleblower named
Frederick Whitehurst, who came forward at great personal and professional risk.
We're going to link to our coverage of Elmer Daniels,
who was interviewed by fellow Xandery death Row Exunery by
(19:05):
the way, John Huffington, both of whom had been victims
of false testimony from the FBI Prime Lab, and it
appears that this culture of misconduct was present during Leonard's trial,
as Evan Hodge testified that his test casings and the
casing from Kohler's trunk were loaded and unloaded from that
particular rifle, while this October nineteen seventy five firing pin
(19:29):
test said otherwise.
Speaker 6 (19:31):
And based on that, I filed emotion for a new trial.
There was a very extensive evidentiary hearing where agent Evan
Hodge tried to say he didn't mean to suggest that
he was talking about the shellcasing found in the agent's car.
(19:51):
He was testing other shellcasings, and it's like, really the
most important piece of evidence in the case. And you
send a teletype about other shellcasings belonging to other ar fifteens,
which the FBI claimed weren't even at the scene. Made
(20:12):
no sense, clearly a lie. But something very interesting happened
in the course of the argument on that appeal. The
government was not convinced they were going to win. The
Eighth Circuit was skeptical, or at least made skeptical sounds,
(20:33):
and so during oral argument the government said, look, we
may not be able to prove that in fact, it
was Peltier who fired the fatal bullets at close range.
Speaker 5 (20:46):
He said, your honor, I want you to know the
government doesn't know who the shooter is nor what participation
Leonard Peltier may have had in it.
Speaker 4 (20:55):
The government switched from Leonard doing it to no, no, no,
Leonard was just a nat in.
Speaker 6 (21:00):
A better That was an amazing concession, because for over
a decade the government and the FBI had been relentlessly
saying that Leonard Peltier walked up to two wounded agents
executed them at point blank range and suddenly the government saying, well, okay,
(21:21):
maybe not, but he was shooting at them. Nonetheless, the
judge denied the motion, and on appeal the Eighth Circuit
said it would possibly have helped Peltier's defense to have
this teletype. It would have helped impeach the agent. It
would have helped you establish that there were other ar
fifteens at the scene. But we're not convinced under the
(21:45):
Brady standard that this was sufficiently material to create a
reasonable possibility that a jury would have come to a
different conclusion had they heard this evidence.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
In what Okay, So this Brady violation destroys the alleged
evidence that Leonard had executed two wounded FBI agents in
cold blood, leaving him, as it was now framed, as
an alleged aider and a better.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
And that's where then it became an issue because wait
a minute, if he was just an aider and a better,
then how could the judge deny him the same defense
that Daryl Butler and Bob Robberty you had where they
were able to show that they had reasons to act
in self defense on that day.
Speaker 6 (22:32):
So we go back into court once again using the
government's concession is a basis for a new trial, and
again the Eighth Circuit manages to affirm the conviction, pointing
out that in the indictment Peltier was named as an
aider and a better so in theory the conviction could
(22:55):
be upheld, even though that was not the case the government.
Speaker 7 (23:00):
What up.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Leonard?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
All these years decades in prison, forty nine years and
eleven days, How did you manage to find hope inside
those walls all those years.
Speaker 5 (23:24):
I didn't join the rest of inmates. I didn't go
into what they usually do, drugs and drinking and things
like that. I kind of went into my own little group.
We played handball, worked out in the weights, and paint.
I went into art room and I decided I was
going to develop my artwork, and I went to school
(23:45):
for a while, helped Peter Mansson write In the Spirit
of Crazy Horse, and then I eventually wrote my own book,
Prison Writings, and In the Spirit of Crazy Horse went
to number one best seller in the world. The FBI
filed twenty million dollar lawsuit. Bill Jankel, the governor of
South Dakota, filed a twenty five million dollar losson They
(24:07):
held it off. The bookshelves for eight and a half years,
cost us two and a half million dollars to defend ourselves, and.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
I hope everyone will order recovery of that book. But
you had on your side, not just Pope Francis Art
Bishop too, to Mother, Teresa Nelson, Mandela Muhammad, Ali.
Speaker 5 (24:23):
Marlon Brando, Robert Redford, Peter Coyote.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
The Dali, Lama, Coreta, Scott.
Speaker 5 (24:29):
King, Santana, Grateful Dead, Willian.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
Nelson, Johnny Depp.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
Of course Rage Against the Machine.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
I know a lot of gen xers and millennials like
myself were too young to know about Leonard when the
case happened back in nineteen seventy five. Some of us
weren't born yet. However, a lot of people heard about
Leonard with a music video for Freedom by Rage Against
the Machine was released on MTV back when that was
still a thing. If you went to a rage show,
(24:59):
especially support of that album, you heard a lot about Leonard.
And that was nineteen ninety four, and his cause gained
a lot of political momentum toward the end of the
Clinton administration, not just because of Rage Against the Machine,
but also because a former FBI agent turned Congressman Don
Edwards joined the cause as well.
Speaker 5 (25:19):
Don Edwards, he was a supporter of mine and he
was doing an interview and they asked him and they said,
why are you supporting someone that was convicted of killing
two year agents? He said, I worked there, I know
what they did to Leonard. And there's others. There's probably
about ten more FBI agents that came forward and said
(25:41):
they don't use this term, but it meant they manufactured
evidence and tortured witnesses and things like that.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
So the political will was primed for Clinton's final days
in office as a team of people, including Bruce Ellison,
advocated passionately for Leonard's clemency.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
And we got some very interesting contacts from some Hollywood
folks who had regular contacts with the Clintons. We met
with White House counsel and chief of staff. We had
a really good meeting.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Was that Bruce Lindsay.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
Bruce Lindsay was one of the participants.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Yes, And leading up to this, about several weeks before
Senator Dashel from South Dakota was the Senate majority leader
at the time, took William Janklow, who.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Was Leonard, told us about his early life too. He's
a reprehensible character must bartant.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Yeah, he was basically a convicting tribal court a child, right.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
If you remember we talked about Bill Jenklow's privileged existence,
his alleged serial rape ignored not only by law enforcement
but by South Dakota voters, paving the way to Janklow
becoming Attorney general Governor of South Dakota twice, as well
as his path to Congress. And after all this time
(26:57):
for Leonard and Ames audacity to RaSE Gencida Eagle Deer's allegations.
During Janklow's run for AG in nineteen seventy four, Jinklow
actively lobbied against Leonard's clemency. In the year two.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Thousand, Dashel leads Janklo in to meet with Clinton. Clinton
was told that South Dakota senator would lose the next election.
It was going to cost the Democrats the Senate if
he pardoned Peltier, which is bullshit.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
But we have this meeting the next week.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
This is on like a Friday, a week before Clinton's leaving.
Speaker 4 (27:31):
Office, and it goes great.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
And in fact, I was asked to draft up a
bunch of bullet points for Clinton to say at a
press conference. Announcing the clemency, and then on Wednesday of
the following week, Clinton's lawyers, according to the Hollywood People,
said that meeting on Wednesday was about whether Clinton was
going to be indicted for perjury in front of the
(27:53):
grand jury, white Water grand Jury, Monica Lewinsky grand jury,
and other things.
Speaker 4 (27:58):
And I've been through lots of.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Of times that they do questioning and work out deals
and all this stuff. And basically, while I don't know
the exact words, Leonard's name came up four times during
the day's discussions, and basically Clinton got the idea and
he was told, look, if you grant this clemency, anytime
you want your huousand two hundred thousand dollars speaking engagements
wherever you are in the country of the world, that's
(28:21):
going to get picketed by cops and we're going to
make it difficulty you to earn your money.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
Well, you can do nothing, and he did nothing.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
By this time, the Supreme Court had also ignored Leonard's
case despite the blatant material Brady violation, and so the
legal battle began to focus on obtaining an estimated one
hundred thousand undisclosed FBI documents through Foyer requests to see
what else they could find.
Speaker 6 (28:46):
Leonard went through a number of lawyers who were fighting
this issue, and he re enlisted me. I think back
in two thousand and six, back in the o's we
got a lot of documents, and a lot of documents
we didn't yet, and a lot of documents we still
haven't received.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
But nothing of newt was handed over. Meanwhile, as sentencing
law went before nineteen eighty four, despite his double life sentence,
Leonard became eligible for parole after twenty five years plus
the seven years he'd gotten for the escape and weapon possession,
and his lawyer made a strong presentation that was summarily
(29:24):
denied for an additional fifteen years, during which time they
lobbied the Obama administration twice to no avail, and Leonard
was denied parole again at the Parole board in twenty
twenty four, with just a few months left in the
Biden administration.
Speaker 6 (29:42):
Administrations, far more sympathetic to Native American issues, refused to
grant him clemency. Every judicial remedy had been exhausted. I mean,
there's two ways to look at the legal fight. One
way is that ongoing consistent legal bans adults shipping away
at the prosecution's case helped enable the mass movement that
(30:07):
eventually succeeded in winning clemency for Peltier. That's what I
choose to believe. There is another position you could take,
which is, despite hundreds of thousands of lawyer hours being
poured into the case, nothing that any of the dozens
of lawyers did accomplished a single damn thing for Leonard.
Speaker 5 (30:31):
But my people have never given up on me. That
was very, very encouraging.
Speaker 3 (30:37):
You know, Leonard's long had such international recognition and efforts
at justice put forth and that have always been ignored.
But the combination this time worked. You know, all the
tribal leaders got together. Secretary Headland spoke to Biden a
couple of times privately. There was a lot of people
who were just making a lot of things happen. And
(30:59):
then Tilson and Holly really just did a tremendous job.
And so anyway, somewhere in this mix, Biden decides to
do the right thing.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
So Holly mccaro and Nick Tilson, from an advocacy group
called Indian Collective, along with a former federal judge named
Kevin Sharp, petitioned the Biden administration for clemency. And there's
a documentary called pre Leonard Peltier that we're going to
link in the episode description. I highly recommend it. By
the way, the moment the news came through was caught
on video. It gave me full body jills watching that
(31:30):
and Holly mccaro, she was actually there for this incredible moment.
Speaker 7 (31:35):
On the day that Leonard was granted clemency, I was
in the parking lot in Florida. He was in Coleman,
the Federal Max. We had told Leonard that we had
had some strong indications and were feeling very positive, but
again we had to see it in writing because of
what happened with Clinton, where they told him he's on
the list, then they wake up and he wasn't on
(31:56):
the list. So we expected it to be on Monday morning.
So we're in the parking lot. We prayed, we sang
our songs, we smudged, and I was in very close
contact with several folks within the White House while we
were waiting. Fred Dejarlie, who's a spiritual leader. He was
with us and he said, there's an eagle over there,
and I didn't know that there were bald eagles in
(32:18):
Florida that far south, and we all looked and there
were two eagles circling above us. You could hear them whistling.
That was maybe then around eleven fifteen am and sixteen
seventeen eighteen, we were hitting refreshed on White House dot
Gov over and over. I was too Yeah, if I'd
never have to hit refresh again, it'll be too soon.
But I had already begun receiving notes from friends and
(32:40):
family and folks who know I had been working in
advocacy for Leonard and saying, oh, I'm really sorry, because
there was already video of the president leaving the White
House and heading for the Capitol on inauguration day there.
So I think it was eleven forty four when the
announcement came through and we celebrated in the parking lot there,
and that announcement it was just that he had commuted
(33:02):
his sentence. We didn't receive the detail with the home
confinement or the date of February eighteenth until a couple
of hours later, and Leonard called me, and almost exactly
an hour later, and he said, well, my dear, I've
been on pins and needles. I've been up since midnight.
He said, did you do it? And I said, yes, Leonard,
President Biden granted you. Clemency was sixteen minutes left in
(33:24):
his administration. He said, did you see it in writing?
And I said, I saw it in writing. And then
Leonard said, so it's real, then it's real. I said, yes,
it's real. You'll be going home.
Speaker 5 (33:35):
I didn't really believe that I got it even after
the war and called me down, gave me a copy
of this commendation and everything, and I said, that is
all a joke, man, And so I really didn't believe
it even very few days later. I just you're going
to come tell me at any moment, so bullshit. And
I were playing games or whatever else. So that's what
(33:56):
went through my mind.
Speaker 6 (33:58):
And honestly, I don't think if anybody saw that coming.
I think that most of us, if we're going to
be honest with ourselves, never thought we would see the
day that Leonard would walk out of prison alive. And
it was just ironic. It took a man with absolutely
(34:19):
no political future left to him to summon up the
political will to go ahead and sign that paper.
Speaker 5 (34:27):
Got in a car with Holly and Nick and hell
out of.
Speaker 7 (34:31):
Here, we had a ribbon shirt, we had new moccasins
for him as he began this new path forward, and
then we had a ceremony to help him leave some
of this behind him and flew him home to Turtle Mountain.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Leonard is finally out of prison, but he's still under
house arrest for the terms of his clemency.
Speaker 1 (34:51):
Which come on house arrest after what we've heard here.
But at least Leonard is finally able to breathe free air,
see family and friends, and see a doctor outside of prison.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
After fifty years of medical neglect, he is in dire
need of medical attention at the age of eighty. We
will link ways to donate in the episode description here,
as well as other action steps, And of course we
asked Leonard and Bruce what else people can do.
Speaker 5 (35:23):
I need my story told again and again and again
because hopefully it will help my people.
Speaker 3 (35:31):
This is a message for people lawyers who I want
to encourage young lawyers to get involved. But that is
you've got to remember that this is a war, and
it's a real war, and they fight it in different ways,
and yes there are risks, because we know the American
government works in a way that they never go after
people for political reasons.
Speaker 4 (35:51):
They're always going after them because they're criminals.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Well, when Jed Cahover passed away to read a book
by Sanford Hunger about the FBI the POSTI, one of
the things he mentions in there was to cover that
up and make it legal. They entered instructions that if
you decided to actually target a person, you have to
put in some crime that you believe that you're actually investigating,
so that whatever the result is, it's not because they're
(36:16):
trying to defend their people they want to protect the
land from a hazard this pipeline. It's because they're engaged
in criminal activities.
Speaker 4 (36:24):
And thus we have the world that.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
We have today right where we're going to watch people
around it up. There's always going to be some law
that they're going to try and claim. Now having a
little problem with the immigration stuff, but really they're going
to pass laws in Congress. They're going to do what
they did in South Dakota and a lot of other
places where what they call anti riot booster laws where
they essentially criminalize nonviolent civil disobedience as terrorism. The struggle
(36:51):
to protect the earth, to protect the people in terms
of having a livable world and a sustainable world and
a free world. That struggle is now reach out another height.
There's renewed Indian activism and the government is going after
people now, so we have like the next wave which
is coming, and men like Leonard Peltier and beIN Pular though,
they're the ones that will help and are helping to
(37:14):
inspire the young people and give a direction of discipline
and love and honor and respect. It's been an honor
of mine despite what I have gone through, and I
got a lot of messages for lawyers who want to
get involved in this particular work. Be prepared for anything,
because you get treated like the people you're representing. They
literally think you're part of it. And to some extent,
(37:36):
I honorably became part of that. Because this is the
real world. These are things that affect people's daily ability
to survive.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
We have a tradition here at Wrongful Conviction. It's called
closing arguments, and it's where I first of all, thank
you again from the bottom of my heart for being
here and sharing this story with us. And then I'm
just going to kick back in my chair and listen
to anything else you feel has been left unsaid.
Speaker 7 (38:02):
I think it is so important to tell this story.
It's about injustice, eventual justice. When we share this story
with audiences like yours, it helps us ensure that this
will never happen again, but it also lets us know
that the work continues. Many of the things that inspired
the birth of the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis, and
that inspired Dino and Leonard and other leaders of the
(38:25):
movement back then, those conditions exist today. Their activism and
voices brought us to the table in the nineteen seventies
and inspired landmark legislation that we all rely on today
to protect American Indian rights. But some of those conditions
exist today, and I think Leonard looking forward has an
important platform and role of leadership in making sure that
the injustice doesn't happen again, but that we are also
(38:47):
always making the noise to protect our people.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
In these dangerous and threatening times, it is important for
us to remember that we can either go as sheep,
or we can stand up. And if we stand up,
and especially stand up for those who were being threatened
by aspects of our system that's designed to stop exposure
(39:11):
the truth the reality of too many people in this
country and we figure out how to do it together
and do it with love. But most importantly, there's too
many people who been wrongfully convicted and who are still
in prison, and anyone who can do anything to help,
information whatever, don't forget those people.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
You just never know what.
Speaker 3 (39:33):
Might happen if you keep trying, and you keep sending
all those prayers and strength and love to those who
are decision making, it's keeping that person strong and healthy.
So I guess that's what I'd say, because it's only
together we can do this, and we can't.
Speaker 5 (39:49):
I can't express how I'm actually feeling about this freedom.
Like I said, I've never expected it. I didn't think
it was going to happen. I thought it was going
to in prison. But it isn't just about Leonard Peltier.
It's about the struggle. It's about what they did or
try to do to us Natives. They tried to exterminate us.
(40:13):
We were we're not supposed to exist no more. We
were supposed to be gone by nineteen eighty five, that's
when the extermination policy was supposed to be completed. So
for me to be able to fight for my people
and sacrifice is an honor. I would not hesitate to
fight for them again, even though I went through fifty
(40:35):
years in prison. It's just something that was honor for
me to fight for my people, and it's honor for
me to be able to talk to them now, to
all the people around the world that supported me. It's
something I can't really express how grateful I am, how
honored I am that they would put me in this position,
and I'm just very grateful for everything everybody's doing.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one
week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for
Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our
production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as
my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Kleiber.
The music in this production was supplied by three time
(41:25):
OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us
across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and
at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram
at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one.
We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported
in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed
(41:46):
by the individuals featured in this show are their own
and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.