Native News Online
A decision to determine the fate of American Indian Movement (AIM) member Leonard Peltier (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) by the U.S. Parole Commission will come within 21 days. The first parole hearing in 15 years for Peltier, 79, who is incarcerated for the killing of two FBI agents,Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, was held on Monday, June 10, 2024.
The hearing was held before a U.S. Parole Commission examiner inside the United States Penitentiary, Coleman, a high-security prison, in Coleman. Fla.
The back and forth between those representing the government and those seeking Peltier’s release at the hearing felt like a trial, according to an unnamed source who spoke with Native News Online on Monday evening...
FBI Director Christopher Wray, sent a letter [full text at that link], dated June 7, 2024, in opposition to Peltier’s release, which included:
...Given the overwhelming and unassailable evidence of his guilt, the brutality of his crimes, and his persistent refusal to accept responsibility, I urge you in the strongest terms possible to deny Peltier’s application for parole. To afford him release after what he did and how he has conducted himself since would most certainly “depreciate the seriousness of his offense [and] promote disrespect for the law”,,,
Paul O’Brien, Executive Director of Amnesty International, wrote a letter [full text at that link] to the parole commission pleading for Pelter’s freedom on humanitarian grounds.
...Given the ongoing, unresolved concerns about the fairness of Leonard Peltier’s incarceration, that he has spent nearly 50 years in prison, his age, and ongoing and chronic health issues, it is our view that granting parole on humanitarian grounds in this case is not only timely but a necessary measure in the interests of both justice and mercy,,,
Previous post.
Background from NPR/AP, a thorough but not too long article.
TheGuardian Leonard Peltier, Indigenous activist in prison for 47 years over FBI killings, has parole hearing FBI chief condemns Peltier, 79, who denies killing agents on Pine Ridge reservation in 1975, as ‘remorseless killer’
...Peltier, 79, has maintained that he did not kill the FBI special agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams in 1975 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Advocates, including figures such as the late Nelson Mandela and a former prosecutor and judge involved in his case, have long said he should be freed because of what they call legal irregularities in his trial….
...Two other Native American men who fired at the agents were tried in 1976 and found not guilty by reason of self-defense. Peltier fled to Canada before the trial. He was eventually extradited back to the US and tried separately in 1977, when he was found guilty.
Amnesty International [like others, has long said] that government prosecutors withheld critical evidence that would have been favorable to Peltier at trial and fabricated affidavits that painted him as guilty.
Since his conviction, a former prosecutor in his trial, a federal judge involved in an appeal, Pope Francis, Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Coretta Scott King and multiple US senators, among others, have called for Peltier’s release….