Leonard Peltier: Let Him Go, Joe!

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Leonard Peltier, a prominent Native American Indian Rights Activist from the 1970's, has been in  prison for forty-four years for a pair of murders which he says he never committed and for which there appears to be no substantive evidence to support his conviction.

Peltier was convicted of fatally shooting two FBI agents during an armed battle on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975.   After his co-defendants in the shootout were acquitted on the grounds of self-defense, the FBI decided to place its case for the killing of its two agents on Peltier, literally the last Indian standing, without any hard evidence to back up that claim.  The FBI built its case on the statements of some of the other protestors at the scene, statements which were later revealed to have been coerced - and some of those statements have since been recanted.

One juror in the case, according to an article in the on-line news source "HuffPost," said on the second day of the trial that she was prejudiced against Peltier's race, but she was never asked to step down from the jury after making that admission.

Leonard Peltier is widely seen as a political prisoner who has been kept behind bars at the insistence of the FBI, and over the years there has been a groundswell of support for his release.  The late Mother Teresa called for Peltier to be set free, as have the Dalai Lama, Pope Francis, Nelson Mandela, and entertainment figures like Bonnie Raitt and Willie Nelson.

According to the aforementioned article in "Huffpost," Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat of Vermont and the senior member of the United States Senate, is also now calling for Peltier's release from prison.

This past summer, again according to the "Huffpost" article, one of the former US Attorneys who helped put Leonard Peltier in prison, wrote to President Biden asking that the President grant him clemency.  James Reynolds said in his letter to Biden:

"I write today from a position rare for a former prosecutor:  to beseech you to commute the sentence of a man who I helped put behind bars.  With time, and the benefit of hindsight, I have realized that the prosecution and continued incarceration of Mr. Peltier was and is unjust.  We were not able to prove that Mr. Peltier personally committed any offense on the Pine Ridge Reservation."

The prosecution was unable to prove that Leonard Peltier personally committed any offense on the Pine Ridge Reservation.    He was an Indian, and he was standing up for his people and their way of life - and for that, and that alone, Leonard Peltier has spent forty-four years behind bars.

The wrong that our nation has done to Leonard Peltier, and his family, and his people cannot be undone, but it can be stopped.   It's time to let him go, Joe!