There is a saying that reverberated throughout Indian Country when Leonard Peltier was convicted in 1977: “If the government can’t get the Indian they want, then they get the Indian they can.”
The same rank injustice that surrounded his imprisonment and condition then continues today. On July 2, the United States Parole Commission denied the legendary Indigenous activist his latest bid for freedom. Peltier is the longest-held political prisoner in the U.S. prison system, having been incarcerated for the last 47 years.
Peltier was framed up in the slaying of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975 and has been jailed for almost a half century over the charges. He now has life-threatening health problems at 79 years old.
His so-called conviction in 1977 was fraught with prosecutorial misconduct, including the coercion of witnesses, the withholding of exculpatory evidence, fake affidavits, and, most outrageously, the hiding of a ballistics report that established that the bullets that killed the agents did not come from Peltier’s gun. Peltier is serving two life sentences.
Peltier was a stalwart activist of the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the 1970s. AIM was an Indigenous civil rights organization dedicated to upholding tribal sovereignty and fighting discrimination and police brutality, among other issues confronting Native people. There was never a time that AIM was called upon that it did not respond. Peltier gave his heart and soul in fighting for Indigenous rights and is emblematic of racist punishment dispensed under the merciless capitalist justice system.
It must also be noted that in January 2017, then-President Barack Obama rejected Peltier’s request for clemency. Currently, his clemency request is before President Biden. In this regard, Peltier is represented by Nashville attorney and former federal judge, Kevin Sharp, who has vowed to continue to work for Peltier’s freedom.
Sharp announced shortly after the Parole Commission’s decision: “Our work to ensure Leonard Peltier is free will not stop. We will immediately begin an appeal to the Parole Commission’s Appeals Board and in federal court. I have not lost hope that Leonard Peltier will one day be free.”
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, this article reflects the views of its author.
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