00:00:02
Speaker 1: Previously on our coverage of the wrongful conviction of Leonard Peltier, Federal prosecutors used false evidence to extradite Leonard Peltier from Canada to the United States, where his code efendants had just been acquitted on the grounds of self defense for the June nineteen seventy five fatal shooting deaths of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation. So in preparation for Leonard's trial, they traded a premeditated ambush narrative for one claiming that after the agents pursued Leonard onto Jumping Bull Ranch to serve a warrant, a firefight had ensued, and when the agents were wounded, the beds claimed that Leonard approached them with an AR fifteen, which ejected a shell casing into the agent's trunk as he executed them in cold blood, but hidden evidence said otherwise, this is wrongful conviction. You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction for the final episode in our coverage of Leonard Peltier, where once again I'm joined by you know him and you love him, Ben Bolin from the podcast Stuff They Don't Want You to Know.

00:01:33
Speaker 2: Thank you, Jason. We'll pick up on this story where we left off when the federal prosecutors have been granted a change of venue from Cedar Rapids, Iowa to Fargo, North Dakota, where Judge Paul Benson cited mental incompetence when Barry Myrtle Poor Bear from testifying about how FBI agents coerced her into swearing falsely in three affidavits to obtain Leonard's extradition from Canada.

00:02:00
Speaker 1: It certainly looks like she was just of no use to them anymore for the purposes of Leonard's trial in March nineteen seventy seven, where the Beds once again were up to their same dirty tricks trying to influence the jury.

00:02:13
Speaker 3: Because the jurors were sequestered during Lennon's trial for their own safety, they were under twenty four hour US Marshall protection. And what we didn't know was that they were transported to the courtroom from their hotel, back to their hotel for lunch, et cetera, back and forth the end of the day, and the windows of this bus were taped up because they were told that this would prevent them from being.

00:02:34
Speaker 4: Shot at by snipers. Wow, and there were sniper teams very visible on the roof.

00:02:39
Speaker 2: Those snipers were FBI agents, but the alleged threat was from AIM and their supporters.

00:02:46
Speaker 3: The way the jurors came out of the building, the bus was parked about fifteen feet from the entrance. The door bursts open, a team of marshalls come and fan out, and then they ushered these jurors in fast as they can so they don't get shot between the building and the bus. You do this four times a day for six weeks, even have an impression.

00:03:06
Speaker 2: That's like psychological warfare.

00:03:08
Speaker 3: It was all about creating a climate of fear and terror. They did it in the courtroom. We had twenty five marshalls in the courtroom at all times. He had agents sitting behind us with submachine guns and cases.

00:03:20
Speaker 1: In addition to the terror tactics, the prosecution team of Lynn Crooks, Evan Holtman and Robert Sikma were able to take the self defense claim off the table with the execution narrative, which in turn barred witness testimony about the Goon Squad's betterally funded terror campaign that made self defense in gun battle the norm on Pine Ridge. And now but Jimmy Eagle also out of the picture. They needed witnesses to place Leonard in the car allegedly being chased by the agents.

00:03:49
Speaker 3: And suddenly a young man, Michael Anderson, who is fifteen years old at the time, in every statement he had given previously said he was in the camp when the firefight started, suddenly was quarter mile away and on the roof of one of the houses and watched a vehicle drive in, chased by the two agents. And it wasn't a red pickup like the agents described, but it was a red and white van like they found up in the camp and had been seen up by the houses at one point. So Mike's telling the story and he describes it as the agents following an orange pickup. And the prosecutor says, now, when you say orange pickup, do you mean a red and white van?

00:04:28
Speaker 2: And he said yes, that day the agents had clearly radioed in describing a red pickup like the one that Jimmy Eagle drove. But since the charges against Jimmy had been dropped the narrative became Leonard in his red and white van. Anderson also said that he'd come running back to the campground to grab a rifle and saw Leonard with an AR fifteen. On cross examination, Mike Anderson admitted that his charges relating to the exploding car in Wichita were dropped in a exchange for this testimony. In a similar vein Wilford, Draper admitted that he'd been threatened with indictment for the murder himself, so he agreed to testify that the group had knowledge of the FBI agent's cars on the day prior and that he had seen Leonard with an AR fifteen. Norman Brown flat out refused to repeat his testimony from the Butler Robadu trial that he'd seen the Trio near the agent's car. He said, quote, it was the agents who said that I saw them end quote, and he added that he too have been threatened with the indictment.

00:05:35
Speaker 5: Yes, the witnesses testified that their family was threatened, their mothers are threatened, and they were threatened of course, and tried to rechat any kind of statement that they were forced to make before. So it was no evidence. Nobody said I was shooting at anybody or killing anybody.

00:05:54
Speaker 1: No one witnessed anyone allegedly performing this execution on these two agents. And the medical evidence was that the agents were shot by a high velocity rifle at close range, and that Agent Williams had a defensive wound on his right hand, and that the gun must have been pressed against it before firing through his hand and his head. But strangely, there was no mention whatsoever of the burn wounds that are associated with close range gunshots. I'm gonna pause on that for a second. And both bodies, by the way, were discovered face down, which does not fit the scenario they described. But the theory was accepted at face value. And then came the ballistics.

00:06:37
Speaker 6: Essentially, it boiled down the two things. Number One, there was one and only one AR fifteen that was present at the Jumping bull compound at that time according to the witness testimony, and that Peltier had been seen with an AR fifteen, and therefore the wichita Ar fifteen was Leonard Peltier's AR fifteen. Now, look, there a few problems with that. Number One is there's no proof that the wichita AR fifteen found in the car months later was ever at the Jumping Bull compound. And more important, there was evidence that the government was aware of that there were numerous Ar fifteens present at that time that were firing bullets. Because they found other shellcasings at the scene, and they found other bullets at the scene, that information was suppressed. The second thing that was crucial was that the very firearms expert who testified for the government had sent a teletype while the investigation was still going on, saying that the shellcasing that was found in the agent's car did not match the wichita Ar fifteen. It was from a different gun. And this was based on a firing pin test.

00:08:06
Speaker 2: If you recall from Part two of our coverage, we discussed the mechanics of a semi automatic weapon and how although this type of analysis is best suited for excluding weapons rather than matchmaking, a firing pin test is the most reliable for identifying an individual weapon, while an extractor mark can merely identify things like make or model. The FBI firearm analyst Evan Hodge testified that the casing had been loaded and extracted from the wichita Ar fifteen. This is why it was so important for both There to have been only one AR fifteen and that it be placed in Leonard's possession. However, there were other AR fifteens, and when they'd received the fire damaged AR fifteen from Wichita, the bolt mechanism was removed and was placed in a different AR fifteen. According to an October nineteen seventy five teletype, a firing pin test of that Wichita AR fifteen was negative for a match with the casing from Agent Cohler's trunk.

00:09:13
Speaker 6: That was never given over to the defense. Had those two pieces of information been given to the defense, obviously the defense would have been in a position to undermine the entire case against Leonard Peltier, and make no mistake about it. The case was presented as Leonard Peltier being the person wielding the Wichita AR fifteen who walked up to both agents as they lay wounded and executed them both with one shell casing being discarded into the agent's car. That was the theory of the trial. That was what the jury believed, and that's how the conviction arose.

00:09:57
Speaker 5: A prosecutor, he made a stake at the closing arguments that I was a cold bloody killer executioner and was effective, I guess.

00:10:07
Speaker 1: They added that the witnesses who undermined their own testimony perhaps should have been tried to, calling aim a blood crazed bunch, and however undermined that testimony, was it aligned with what appeared to be scientific evidence related to this one shell casing that may or may not have been ejected into this agent's trunk. When you think about it, with all of the other lies, it's hard to know whether to believe this or any of this so called evidence. But nonetheless, on the fateful day of April eighteenth, nineteen seventy seven, Leonard Peltier was convicted on two counts a first degree murder.

00:10:48
Speaker 5: The clerk of the court told us, Judge Benson's not going to give you no more than thirty years. I would get out in fifteen. I take some of that, but I was so fucking upset that I wrote a very strong anti government statement. I condemned the court, I condemned a judge and the whole system with such disregard for the constitution, attempts at exterminating us. And I read that just before he sentenced me, and he gave me two life sentences. So if I had to keep my mouth shut. I probably would have been out after fifteen years, but I was just so fucking angry that I just couldn't control myself. Right after I was convicted, the elders came up to the railing there and said, we want you to know that we will fight for you for the rest of our lives if you're still in prison, and our children will fight for you for the rest of their lives, and if you're still in there, our grandkids will fight for you. They sent me to marry in Illinois's the harshest president I had at that time. It took the place of Alcatraz. They put me in a hole there and so that they can find it. I went to a hearing about thirty days later, and the captain there sentenced me to a century deprivation cell indefinitely. It's complete darkness. They only got one blanket to sleep on, and the only time you get light is when they opened the food slot. People come out of their completely nuts. Some people never come out of there. I was supposed to die in her I said a lot of prayers to Uncle Tunka, get your man to do that's the great spirit, and I just made my mind up you ain't going to break me. But my lawyers and other people were fighting. They finally got a hearing in the Supreme Court said you cannot re sentence people to these type of cells he's been setting and beside that that soll you got there is illegal.

00:13:04
Speaker 2: At this point, Leonard's appeals had been picked up by Dino and Bob's attorney, William Kuntzler, and this small victory over cruel and unusual punishment came along with the denial of his direct appeal, at which time Leonard was transferred to another facility, Lompoc.

00:13:21
Speaker 5: And when I got there, I couldn't believe it. I mean, this was so.

00:13:26
Speaker 1: Many holes, holes in the wall.

00:13:28
Speaker 2: No, I mean to escape, like the fencing and lower security.

00:13:33
Speaker 5: And some of the towers wasn't occupied, and I was looking around here. I said, wow. So first opportunity I got, we went out during the night, made it across the fence and they were shooting at us by then, and Dallas Thundershield had his arms up surrendering and they shot him in the back. I was able to escape, and I was gone five days out in the desert.

00:13:56
Speaker 2: And made it to Santa Maria California.

00:13:58
Speaker 5: Yes, miles from the prison. I was heading from Mexico. I was going out there to Dickaraka and I was sitting under this tree, and I haven't looked down to the lower grounds, and I seen this garden and I thought, gee, that it would be nice to sit up here and eat the melon or whatever else I could do. So I go down to this garden and all sudden, this guy starts shooting at me. I put my arms up. He got close enough to me where I snatched the gun out of his hand, and then he said, I suppose you're going to kill me now. And I looked at him. I said, what the fuck you tried to kill me, fucking asshole, excuse my language. But he got all panicky now he was crying and everything, and no, I wasn't just trying to chase you out of my garden. And I said, you're that and I just said I can't do this. And I told him, I said, well, don't be running calling the cops. Let me get away from here, okay, okay, but call the cops soon as he could. I guess they could come all from all directions. When they had me on the ground. This deputy sheriff was putting on handcuffs. I mean, the FBI agent came and put that barrel right here, and he said, your son him a bit. You killed two of my friends. I'm gonna blow your fucking brains up. And I just looked at him as well, do it, fucking brave, asked ole motherfucker. Now that I'm handcuffed and everything, I said, do it shoot And the deputy sheriff we started shaking on my back and he said, I'm not going to be part of no killing. So they must have been talking about it to see me kill me.

00:15:30
Speaker 1: Leonard got seven more years for the escape and weapons possession. By this time, every new class of FBI agents was being indoctrinated with the image of Leonard Peltier as their boogeyman. And meanwhile, in Canada, this a listener general, a guy named Warren Almond, began to make noise about how the FBI and prosecutors had presented Myrtle Forbear's perjured Affidavid's at Leonard's extradition.

00:15:56
Speaker 5: Hearing the Native people in Canada forced him to do an investigation on the extradition. Then they sealed it for forty years. Warren Allman was very upset about it. He took him another year to get in there and read this investigation report, and he found a letter in there from the Justice Department here in the United States that said, if you put in this investigation and release it, we would hold the fifty five million dollars that we're going to send you to the Joint Agricultural Laboratory.

00:16:30
Speaker 2: Well, with Warren Allman's efforts, newtered Leonardstein also exhausted the Myrtle poor Bear evidence.

00:16:37
Speaker 5: In post conviction on the Myrtle porbar thing, the judge asked Evan Haltman, we don't understand how anyone could continue to extract information from this witness, because it's quite obvious she was not a real witness. So Haltman said, your Honor, I had nothing to do with her, and when I read her AFFI David, I knew there was not once entil of truth. A few years later we find a document he had flew into Rapid City, and prosecutor that was representing the United States and Canada flew in from Canada and they wrote her third affidavit.

00:17:14
Speaker 2: So Evan Holtman's deception was once again not discovered until it was too late. And around this time is when Ron Kobe got involved.

00:17:24
Speaker 6: When I was a law student way back in nineteen eighty two, I started interning for William Kunstler, and at that point he was very deeply involved in trying to secure a new trial for Leonard Peltier, and so I started working on that case almost immediately and continued when I was finally admitted to the bar in nineteen eighty four. Kunstler had obtained new information that he believed was the key to getting Leonard a new trial.

00:17:54
Speaker 3: So here we had ballistics evidence I mentioned before the agent gets on the stand as well. We can't definitively do a firing pin test, but we can do an extractor mark test, and in fact there's a match. And for lawyers, if you see a word in a government document that refers to another document, you got to go after it.

00:18:14
Speaker 6: I think it was a freedom of information. After request, Kunstler learned of the existence of this teletype from Agent Hodge, which had been suppressed.

00:18:26
Speaker 3: We asked for two October second teletypes that we had not gotten. Not only could that damaged AR fifteen from Kansas, at least the one that they used to test could produce a firing pin test, but those teletypes revealed that there was no match whatsoever whatsoever.

00:18:45
Speaker 1: In previous episodes, we've covered the FBI Crime Lab and the culture of misconduct, false testimony, and manipulating evidence that was exposed in the mid nineties by a whistleblower named Frederick Whitehurst, who came forward at great personal and professional risk. We're going to link to our coverage of Elmer Daniels, who was interviewed by fellow Xandery death Row Exunery by the way, John Huffington, both of whom had been victims of false testimony from the FBI Prime Lab, and it appears that this culture of misconduct was present during Leonard's trial, as Evan Hodge testified that his test casings and the casing from Kohler's trunk were loaded and unloaded from that particular rifle, while this October nineteen seventy five firing pin test said otherwise.

00:19:31
Speaker 6: And based on that, I filed emotion for a new trial. There was a very extensive evidentiary hearing where agent Evan Hodge tried to say he didn't mean to suggest that he was talking about the shellcasing found in the agent's car. He was testing other shellcasings, and it's like, really the most important piece of evidence in the case. And you send a teletype about other shellcasings belonging to other ar fifteens, which the FBI claimed weren't even at the scene. Made no sense, clearly a lie. But something very interesting happened in the course of the argument on that appeal. The government was not convinced they were going to win. The Eighth Circuit was skeptical, or at least made skeptical sounds, and so during oral argument the government said, look, we may not be able to prove that in fact, it was Peltier who fired the fatal bullets at close range.

00:20:46
Speaker 5: He said, your honor, I want you to know the government doesn't know who the shooter is nor what participation Leonard Peltier may have had in it.

00:20:55
Speaker 4: The government switched from Leonard doing it to no, no, no, Leonard was just a nat in.

00:21:00
Speaker 6: A better That was an amazing concession, because for over a decade the government and the FBI had been relentlessly saying that Leonard Peltier walked up to two wounded agents executed them at point blank range and suddenly the government saying, well, okay, maybe not, but he was shooting at them. Nonetheless, the judge denied the motion, and on appeal the Eighth Circuit said it would possibly have helped Peltier's defense to have this teletype. It would have helped impeach the agent. It would have helped you establish that there were other ar fifteens at the scene. But we're not convinced under the Brady standard that this was sufficiently material to create a reasonable possibility that a jury would have come to a different conclusion had they heard this evidence.

00:22:00
Speaker 1: In what Okay, So this Brady violation destroys the alleged evidence that Leonard had executed two wounded FBI agents in cold blood, leaving him, as it was now framed, as an alleged aider and a better.

00:22:18
Speaker 3: And that's where then it became an issue because wait a minute, if he was just an aider and a better, then how could the judge deny him the same defense that Daryl Butler and Bob Robberty you had where they were able to show that they had reasons to act in self defense on that day.

00:22:32
Speaker 6: So we go back into court once again using the government's concession is a basis for a new trial, and again the Eighth Circuit manages to affirm the conviction, pointing out that in the indictment Peltier was named as an aider and a better so in theory the conviction could be upheld, even though that was not the case the government.

00:23:00
Speaker 7: What up.

00:23:14
Speaker 4: Leonard?

00:23:15
Speaker 1: All these years decades in prison, forty nine years and eleven days, How did you manage to find hope inside those walls all those years.

00:23:24
Speaker 5: I didn't join the rest of inmates. I didn't go into what they usually do, drugs and drinking and things like that. I kind of went into my own little group. We played handball, worked out in the weights, and paint. I went into art room and I decided I was going to develop my artwork, and I went to school for a while, helped Peter Mansson write In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, and then I eventually wrote my own book, Prison Writings, and In the Spirit of Crazy Horse went to number one best seller in the world. The FBI filed twenty million dollar lawsuit. Bill Jankel, the governor of South Dakota, filed a twenty five million dollar losson They held it off. The bookshelves for eight and a half years, cost us two and a half million dollars to defend ourselves, and.

00:24:13
Speaker 1: I hope everyone will order recovery of that book. But you had on your side, not just Pope Francis Art Bishop too, to Mother, Teresa Nelson, Mandela Muhammad, Ali.

00:24:23
Speaker 5: Marlon Brando, Robert Redford, Peter Coyote.

00:24:27
Speaker 1: The Dali, Lama, Coreta, Scott.

00:24:29
Speaker 5: King, Santana, Grateful Dead, Willian.

00:24:33
Speaker 4: Nelson, Johnny Depp.

00:24:34
Speaker 1: Of course Rage Against the Machine.

00:24:37
Speaker 2: I know a lot of gen xers and millennials like myself were too young to know about Leonard when the case happened back in nineteen seventy five. Some of us weren't born yet. However, a lot of people heard about Leonard with a music video for Freedom by Rage Against the Machine was released on MTV back when that was still a thing. If you went to a rage show, especially support of that album, you heard a lot about Leonard. And that was nineteen ninety four, and his cause gained a lot of political momentum toward the end of the Clinton administration, not just because of Rage Against the Machine, but also because a former FBI agent turned Congressman Don Edwards joined the cause as well.

00:25:19
Speaker 5: Don Edwards, he was a supporter of mine and he was doing an interview and they asked him and they said, why are you supporting someone that was convicted of killing two year agents? He said, I worked there, I know what they did to Leonard. And there's others. There's probably about ten more FBI agents that came forward and said they don't use this term, but it meant they manufactured evidence and tortured witnesses and things like that.

00:25:48
Speaker 1: So the political will was primed for Clinton's final days in office as a team of people, including Bruce Ellison, advocated passionately for Leonard's clemency.

00:25:58
Speaker 3: And we got some very interesting contacts from some Hollywood folks who had regular contacts with the Clintons. We met with White House counsel and chief of staff. We had a really good meeting.

00:26:11
Speaker 1: Was that Bruce Lindsay.

00:26:12
Speaker 4: Bruce Lindsay was one of the participants.

00:26:14
Speaker 3: Yes, And leading up to this, about several weeks before Senator Dashel from South Dakota was the Senate majority leader at the time, took William Janklow, who.

00:26:28
Speaker 1: Was Leonard, told us about his early life too. He's a reprehensible character must bartant.

00:26:34
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was basically a convicting tribal court a child, right.

00:26:37
Speaker 2: If you remember we talked about Bill Jenklow's privileged existence, his alleged serial rape ignored not only by law enforcement but by South Dakota voters, paving the way to Janklow becoming Attorney general Governor of South Dakota twice, as well as his path to Congress. And after all this time for Leonard and Ames audacity to RaSE Gencida Eagle Deer's allegations. During Janklow's run for AG in nineteen seventy four, Jinklow actively lobbied against Leonard's clemency. In the year two.

00:27:10
Speaker 3: Thousand, Dashel leads Janklo in to meet with Clinton. Clinton was told that South Dakota senator would lose the next election. It was going to cost the Democrats the Senate if he pardoned Peltier, which is bullshit.

00:27:26
Speaker 4: But we have this meeting the next week.

00:27:28
Speaker 3: This is on like a Friday, a week before Clinton's leaving.

00:27:31
Speaker 4: Office, and it goes great.

00:27:33
Speaker 3: And in fact, I was asked to draft up a bunch of bullet points for Clinton to say at a press conference. Announcing the clemency, and then on Wednesday of the following week, Clinton's lawyers, according to the Hollywood People, said that meeting on Wednesday was about whether Clinton was going to be indicted for perjury in front of the grand jury, white Water grand Jury, Monica Lewinsky grand jury, and other things.

00:27:58
Speaker 4: And I've been through lots of.

00:28:00
Speaker 3: Of times that they do questioning and work out deals and all this stuff. And basically, while I don't know the exact words, Leonard's name came up four times during the day's discussions, and basically Clinton got the idea and he was told, look, if you grant this clemency, anytime you want your huousand two hundred thousand dollars speaking engagements wherever you are in the country of the world, that's going to get picketed by cops and we're going to make it difficulty you to earn your money.

00:28:25
Speaker 4: Well, you can do nothing, and he did nothing.

00:28:29
Speaker 1: By this time, the Supreme Court had also ignored Leonard's case despite the blatant material Brady violation, and so the legal battle began to focus on obtaining an estimated one hundred thousand undisclosed FBI documents through Foyer requests to see what else they could find.

00:28:46
Speaker 6: Leonard went through a number of lawyers who were fighting this issue, and he re enlisted me. I think back in two thousand and six, back in the o's we got a lot of documents, and a lot of documents we didn't yet, and a lot of documents we still haven't received.

00:29:03
Speaker 2: But nothing of newt was handed over. Meanwhile, as sentencing law went before nineteen eighty four, despite his double life sentence, Leonard became eligible for parole after twenty five years plus the seven years he'd gotten for the escape and weapon possession, and his lawyer made a strong presentation that was summarily denied for an additional fifteen years, during which time they lobbied the Obama administration twice to no avail, and Leonard was denied parole again at the Parole board in twenty twenty four, with just a few months left in the Biden administration.

00:29:42
Speaker 6: Administrations, far more sympathetic to Native American issues, refused to grant him clemency. Every judicial remedy had been exhausted. I mean, there's two ways to look at the legal fight. One way is that ongoing consistent legal bans adults shipping away at the prosecution's case helped enable the mass movement that eventually succeeded in winning clemency for Peltier. That's what I choose to believe. There is another position you could take, which is, despite hundreds of thousands of lawyer hours being poured into the case, nothing that any of the dozens of lawyers did accomplished a single damn thing for Leonard.

00:30:31
Speaker 5: But my people have never given up on me. That was very, very encouraging.

00:30:37
Speaker 3: You know, Leonard's long had such international recognition and efforts at justice put forth and that have always been ignored. But the combination this time worked. You know, all the tribal leaders got together. Secretary Headland spoke to Biden a couple of times privately. There was a lot of people who were just making a lot of things happen. And then Tilson and Holly really just did a tremendous job. And so anyway, somewhere in this mix, Biden decides to do the right thing.

00:31:07
Speaker 1: So Holly mccaro and Nick Tilson, from an advocacy group called Indian Collective, along with a former federal judge named Kevin Sharp, petitioned the Biden administration for clemency. And there's a documentary called pre Leonard Peltier that we're going to link in the episode description. I highly recommend it. By the way, the moment the news came through was caught on video. It gave me full body jills watching that and Holly mccaro, she was actually there for this incredible moment.

00:31:35
Speaker 7: On the day that Leonard was granted clemency, I was in the parking lot in Florida. He was in Coleman, the Federal Max. We had told Leonard that we had had some strong indications and were feeling very positive, but again we had to see it in writing because of what happened with Clinton, where they told him he's on the list, then they wake up and he wasn't on the list. So we expected it to be on Monday morning. So we're in the parking lot. We prayed, we sang our songs, we smudged, and I was in very close contact with several folks within the White House while we were waiting. Fred Dejarlie, who's a spiritual leader. He was with us and he said, there's an eagle over there, and I didn't know that there were bald eagles in Florida that far south, and we all looked and there were two eagles circling above us. You could hear them whistling. That was maybe then around eleven fifteen am and sixteen seventeen eighteen, we were hitting refreshed on White House dot Gov over and over. I was too Yeah, if I'd never have to hit refresh again, it'll be too soon. But I had already begun receiving notes from friends and family and folks who know I had been working in advocacy for Leonard and saying, oh, I'm really sorry, because there was already video of the president leaving the White House and heading for the Capitol on inauguration day there. So I think it was eleven forty four when the announcement came through and we celebrated in the parking lot there, and that announcement it was just that he had commuted his sentence. We didn't receive the detail with the home confinement or the date of February eighteenth until a couple of hours later, and Leonard called me, and almost exactly an hour later, and he said, well, my dear, I've been on pins and needles. I've been up since midnight. He said, did you do it? And I said, yes, Leonard, President Biden granted you. Clemency was sixteen minutes left in his administration. He said, did you see it in writing? And I said, I saw it in writing. And then Leonard said, so it's real, then it's real. I said, yes, it's real. You'll be going home.

00:33:35
Speaker 5: I didn't really believe that I got it even after the war and called me down, gave me a copy of this commendation and everything, and I said, that is all a joke, man, And so I really didn't believe it even very few days later. I just you're going to come tell me at any moment, so bullshit. And I were playing games or whatever else. So that's what went through my mind.

00:33:58
Speaker 6: And honestly, I don't think if anybody saw that coming. I think that most of us, if we're going to be honest with ourselves, never thought we would see the day that Leonard would walk out of prison alive. And it was just ironic. It took a man with absolutely no political future left to him to summon up the political will to go ahead and sign that paper.

00:34:27
Speaker 5: Got in a car with Holly and Nick and hell out of.

00:34:31
Speaker 7: Here, we had a ribbon shirt, we had new moccasins for him as he began this new path forward, and then we had a ceremony to help him leave some of this behind him and flew him home to Turtle Mountain.

00:34:46
Speaker 2: Leonard is finally out of prison, but he's still under house arrest for the terms of his clemency.

00:34:51
Speaker 1: Which come on house arrest after what we've heard here. But at least Leonard is finally able to breathe free air, see family and friends, and see a doctor outside of prison.

00:35:05
Speaker 2: After fifty years of medical neglect, he is in dire need of medical attention at the age of eighty. We will link ways to donate in the episode description here, as well as other action steps, And of course we asked Leonard and Bruce what else people can do.

00:35:23
Speaker 5: I need my story told again and again and again because hopefully it will help my people.

00:35:31
Speaker 3: This is a message for people lawyers who I want to encourage young lawyers to get involved. But that is you've got to remember that this is a war, and it's a real war, and they fight it in different ways, and yes there are risks, because we know the American government works in a way that they never go after people for political reasons.

00:35:51
Speaker 4: They're always going after them because they're criminals.

00:35:53
Speaker 3: Well, when Jed Cahover passed away to read a book by Sanford Hunger about the FBI the POSTI, one of the things he mentions in there was to cover that up and make it legal. They entered instructions that if you decided to actually target a person, you have to put in some crime that you believe that you're actually investigating, so that whatever the result is, it's not because they're trying to defend their people they want to protect the land from a hazard this pipeline. It's because they're engaged in criminal activities.

00:36:24
Speaker 4: And thus we have the world that.

00:36:25
Speaker 3: We have today right where we're going to watch people around it up. There's always going to be some law that they're going to try and claim. Now having a little problem with the immigration stuff, but really they're going to pass laws in Congress. They're going to do what they did in South Dakota and a lot of other places where what they call anti riot booster laws where they essentially criminalize nonviolent civil disobedience as terrorism. The struggle to protect the earth, to protect the people in terms of having a livable world and a sustainable world and a free world. That struggle is now reach out another height. There's renewed Indian activism and the government is going after people now, so we have like the next wave which is coming, and men like Leonard Peltier and beIN Pular though, they're the ones that will help and are helping to inspire the young people and give a direction of discipline and love and honor and respect. It's been an honor of mine despite what I have gone through, and I got a lot of messages for lawyers who want to get involved in this particular work. Be prepared for anything, because you get treated like the people you're representing. They literally think you're part of it. And to some extent, I honorably became part of that. Because this is the real world. These are things that affect people's daily ability to survive.

00:37:44
Speaker 1: We have a tradition here at Wrongful Conviction. It's called closing arguments, and it's where I first of all, thank you again from the bottom of my heart for being here and sharing this story with us. And then I'm just going to kick back in my chair and listen to anything else you feel has been left unsaid.

00:38:02
Speaker 7: I think it is so important to tell this story. It's about injustice, eventual justice. When we share this story with audiences like yours, it helps us ensure that this will never happen again, but it also lets us know that the work continues. Many of the things that inspired the birth of the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis, and that inspired Dino and Leonard and other leaders of the movement back then, those conditions exist today. Their activism and voices brought us to the table in the nineteen seventies and inspired landmark legislation that we all rely on today to protect American Indian rights. But some of those conditions exist today, and I think Leonard looking forward has an important platform and role of leadership in making sure that the injustice doesn't happen again, but that we are also always making the noise to protect our people.

00:38:49
Speaker 3: In these dangerous and threatening times, it is important for us to remember that we can either go as sheep, or we can stand up. And if we stand up, and especially stand up for those who were being threatened by aspects of our system that's designed to stop exposure the truth the reality of too many people in this country and we figure out how to do it together and do it with love. But most importantly, there's too many people who been wrongfully convicted and who are still in prison, and anyone who can do anything to help, information whatever, don't forget those people.

00:39:31
Speaker 4: You just never know what.

00:39:33
Speaker 3: Might happen if you keep trying, and you keep sending all those prayers and strength and love to those who are decision making, it's keeping that person strong and healthy. So I guess that's what I'd say, because it's only together we can do this, and we can't.

00:39:49
Speaker 5: I can't express how I'm actually feeling about this freedom. Like I said, I've never expected it. I didn't think it was going to happen. I thought it was going to in prison. But it isn't just about Leonard Peltier. It's about the struggle. It's about what they did or try to do to us Natives. They tried to exterminate us. We were we're not supposed to exist no more. We were supposed to be gone by nineteen eighty five, that's when the extermination policy was supposed to be completed. So for me to be able to fight for my people and sacrifice is an honor. I would not hesitate to fight for them again, even though I went through fifty years in prison. It's just something that was honor for me to fight for my people, and it's honor for me to be able to talk to them now, to all the people around the world that supported me. It's something I can't really express how grateful I am, how honored I am that they would put me in this position, and I'm just very grateful for everything everybody's doing.

00:41:05
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink, as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Kleiber. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction. You can also follow me on Instagram at It's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number one. We have worked hard to ensure that all facts reported in this show are accurate. The views and opinions expressed by the individuals featured in this show are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Lava for Good