Lawyers: Peltier's sentence ‘illegal'

[NVMojo]

this has always been a fascinating case ....

FARGO, N.D. — Lawyers for imprisoned American Indian activist Leonard Peltier say the government did not have the right to try him for crimes that occurred on a South Dakota Indian reservation.

Peltier, 60, is serving life in prison for the killing of two FBI agents during a 1975 standoff on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He was convicted in U.S. District Court in Fargo in 1977.

In a motion filed Wednesday in federal court, Peltier's lawyers claim the sentence is illegal and say he should be released from federal prison in Leavenworth, Kan.

more...

http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/articles/2004/12/16/news/state/state03.txt

[hippiechick]

1. I hope they succeed ...

Tried and convicted on primarily bogus circumstantial evidence, IMO.

Would be a victory for our side. Which is why I'm not counting on it. :(


:hippie:

[NVMojo]

2. if more white people would realize this could happen to them ...

[countryjake]

6. That's the problem...

Until it does, they won't.

[ellie]

3. This is the grossest

miscarriage of justice ever. I fear Leonard will die in prison before he is released.

[On the Road]

4. I Believe They Used "Haymarket Riot" Reasoning

Namely, if a crime was committed by someone in a crowd, and the individual cannot be identified, someone in the crowd or associated with it can be charged instead. And the Haymarket decision is infamous and widely repudiated today. But they used the same principles to convict Peltier.

[seemslikeadream]

5. Dedicated to Leonard Peltier, memory of Anna Mae Aquash and Joseph Stuntz

BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE
When people ask, "What happened to the North American Indians in the 1880s?", you can pretty much point to the robber barons of the time who needed to make a fortune in oil, gold and other precious metals. Simple greed in the hands of a powerful few who manipulated the media and politicians. When people ask, "What happened to the Indian movement of the sixties and seventies?", you can pretty much point to the same motives a hundred years later, with uranium added to the list in very big print.
The shocking information in this song is not new, but strung together; the events tell a story that most non-Indian people don't know. Dedicated to Leonard Peltier, the memory of Anna Mae Aquash and Joseph Stuntz.

Indian legislation on the desk of a do-right Congressman
Now, he don't know much about the issue
so he picks up the phone and he asks advice from the
Senator out in Indian country
A darling of the energy companies who are
ripping off what’s left of the reservations. Huh.

I learned a safety rule
I don’t know who to thank
Don't stand between the reservation and the
corporate bank
They send in federal tanks
It isn’t nice but it’s reality

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee
Deep in the Earth
Cover me with pretty lies
bury my heart at Wounded Knee. Huh.

They got these energy companies that want the land
and they’ve got churches by the dozen who want to
guide our hands
and sign Mother Earth over to pollution, war and
greed
Get rich... get rich quick.

We got the federal marshals
We got the covert spies
We got the liars by the fire
We got the FBIs
They lie in court and get nailed
and still Peltier goes off to jail

My girlfriend Annie Mae talked about uranium
Her head was filled with bullets and her body dumped
The FBI cut off her hands and told us she’d died of
exposure
Loo loo loo loo loo

We had the Goldrush Wars
Aw, didn’t we learn to crawl and still our history gets
written in a liar’s scrawl
They tell ‘ya “Honey, you can still be an Indian
d-d-down at the ‘Y’
on Saturday nights”

Bury my heart at Wounded Knee
Deep in the Earth
Cover me with pretty lies
Bury my heart at Wounded Knee. Huh!

-Buffy Sainte-Marie

http://www.creative-native.com/lyrics/burylyr.htm

[Dhalgren]

7. I was up on the White Earth reservation in the late '70s

and man it was a powder keg. The Indians up there were almost the only one's to show any kind of restraint or rationality during the "crisis". There are some mighty good people up there...

[BikeWriter]

8. Bury my heart at Wounded Knee! n/t

[countryjake]

9. Too bad that wasted election money couldn't go to a good cause!

~another snip~

"Over the course of the last three decades, it's never been clear what Peltier has been willing to admit," U.S. Attorney Wrigley said. "His debt for these brutal crimes has not been paid."


These lying fools don't know a thing about paying debts for past brutality! You talk to people today & they'll say, "What a shame we mistreated so many tribes back then!"; then you tell them Native Americans are still being murdered & incarcerated, now, & they'll say, "Oh, well they're too angry & violent...don't know how to fit in." It's the same story it always was, for five hundred years, repressing the nations whose very existence revolves around living in harmony on this land. And the ghost still dances.

[libpunkmom]

10. Every year

we have a march to the Fed building and a rally for Leonard. There are quite a few of us who had family members who were in AIM in the 70's. And we will never let this fade away!!!

[geek tragedy]

11. Peltier is a scumbag.

When the people who allegedly shot the agents come forward, I'll pretend to care.

Note: He was a career criminal before this incident. MLK he ain't.

[seemslikeadream]

12. By conservative estimates,

the population of the United states prior to European contact was greater than 12 million. Four centuries later, the count was reduced by 95% to 237 thousand.

[arikara]

13. So a guy who may or may not have had a couple of minor

skirmishes with the law is railroaded by the justice system and that's ok? By that reasoning it must have been ok to invade Iraq, kill lots of brown people and steal their resources because pick one Saddam had WMD, Saddam was evil, Saddam attempted to kill pappy, Saddam gassed his own people.

The judge himself said that there was no way to prove that Leonard Peltier killed those FBI agents but that someone had to pay. The other men that went to trial before Leonard were let off because nothing could be proven so they made sure that the next one which was Leonard paid for it. They sure didn't care that no one paid for the dozens of native people that were murdered on Pine Ridge in that era. The whole thing was and is shameful. And as a Canadian I am embarassed about our government's part in this travesty.

on edit: fix typo

[Moderator]

14. duplicate topic

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1075874