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On June 26, 1975 two FBI Special Agents, Ronald A. Williams, 27, and Jack R. Coler, 28, were killed on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Southwestern South Dakota. Peltier fled to Canada after his friends went on trial for the murder of the two agents. He was captured and extradited to the United States to face trial.
During his trial in US District Court in Fargo, North Dakota, in April 1977, a jury convicted Peltier of the murders of Coler and Williams. A judge sentenced him to two consecutive life sentences.
There has been debate over his guilt and the fairness of his trial. Supporters are asking that he be pardoned or paroled.
Near the end of President Bill Clinton's presidency in 2000, rumors began circulating that Clinton was considering granting Peltier clemency. This led to a large campaign against possible clemency orchestrated primarily by FBI agents, culminating in a protest outside the White House by about five hundred agents and their families, and a letter opposing clemency from then FBI director Louis Freeh. Clinton ended up not granting Peltier clemency. Some speculate this was at least partially due to the pressure from these protests.
In 2002, Peltier filed a civil rights lawsuit against the FBI, Louis Freeh, and a long list of FBI agents who had participated in the campaign against his clemency petition, alleging that they "engaged in a systematic and officially sanctioned campaign of misinformation and disinformation." As of August 2003, this suit is still pending.
Peltier is considered a political prisoner by some people and groups including Nelson Mandela, Rigoberta Menchu, Amnesty International, the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights, Tenzin Gyatso (the 14th Dalai Lama), the European Parliament, the Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, and Rev. Jesse Jackson. To many Indigenous Peoples, Leonard Peltier is a symbol of the long history of abuse and repression they have endured.
The case for Peltier's pardon has been two-fold. One argument asserts his innocence, and that he variously had no knowledge of the murders(as he told CNN in 1999), that he has knowledge which he will never reveal, or (as told in In the Spirit of Crazy Horse) that he approached and searched the agents but did not execute them. Another argument holds that the killings (no matter who committed them) occured during a war-like atmosphere on the reservation in which FBI agents were terrorizing residents in the wake of the Pine Ridge standoff in 1972.
New revelations abount incidents of 1975 on Pine Ridge indicate there is little agreement, even among Indian communities close to the events, regarding Peltier's claim to innocence. News from Indian Country publisher Paul Demain wrote that an unnamed delegation with knowledge of the incident told him, "Peltier was responsible for the close range execution of the agents..." [1]
DeMain and colleagues conducted an exhaustive investigation, reviewing trial documents, investigative records, books, and media accounts. His paper has interviewed scores of individuals related to the incident. He describes the delegation who revealed Peltier's role as "grandfathers and grandmothers, AIM activists, Pipe carriers and others who have carried a heavy unhealthy burden within them that has taken its toll." DeMain has suggested the cover-up of Peltier's role in the agents' deaths led to the execution of AIM activist Anna Mae Aquash, for whose murder two other AIM members were indicted in 2002. Having reviewed alleged irregularities or deception by government officials in the case, DeMain suggests the FBI, lacking evidence sufficient to make a genuine case against Peltier, framed a none-the-less guilty man.
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