Leonard Peltier was a crucial actor in the American Indian Movement who is now wrongfully imprisoned in a federal penitentiary in Florida, Massachusetts. He was convicted in 1975 by a jury of his peers for the murder of two FBI agents and was given two consecutive life sentences. And although he consistently petitions for parole, requesting his permanent release on the grounds that the FBI unlawfully obtained and falsified evidence crucial to Peltier’s conviction, as well as coerced false witness testimony in an effort to pin the crime of him, each time he has been denied.
It was during a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in South Dakota on June 26, 1975, that FBI agents Ronald Williams and Jack Coler were shot and killed. The…show more content… Within seconds the place was swarmed by law enforcement agents, there was no way out for those living on the reservation. When the bullets stopped flying, the body count was noted to be three, two law enforcement agents and one Native American named Joseph Stuntz whose death has still, to this day, not been investigated, nor have any charges been brought up. Out of all forty Native Americans who were on the reservation during the confrontation with law enforcement, the FBI only chose three, seemingly at random. The first two were acquitted by a jury who determined that based on state of violence and disarray that witnesses said occurred during that time, they were probably only acting in self-defense and to them that was justified. However, at the trial of Leonard Peltier the prosecution brought forth what was later found out to be fake evidence connecting Peltier to the two murders. They alleged that the gun discovered at the scene of the crime was determined to be Leonard Peltier’s. When they later found out Peltier’s gun was not like the one that killed the two FBI agents which had a different type of firing pin, the government responded with a completely
