In the past weeks everyone has been hearing about Marc Rich, a man who basically bought himself a pardon in the last days of the Clinton administration. What has not been discussed, however, is who did not receive a pardon and should have. Leonard Peltier is a political prisoner in Leavenworth, Kan., who actually deserves to be pardoned.

Peltier was a member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), an organization that the FBI has a vendetta against, so they labeled it a terrorist organization. He was among 30 other men, women and children camping out on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975 when the FBI decided they were a threat and used false pretenses to enter the reservation. A shoot-out occurred and two FBI agents were killed.

Four men were arrested for the deaths of the agents, including Peltier. Two of those men were tried in Iowa and acquitted because they were defending themselves – the men involved didn’t even know who was shooting at them and only were defending the others who also were camped there. The charges were dropped against the third man, leaving only Peltier to stand trial for the whole incident.

The trial was biased from the start. Peltier was not allowed to use the self-defense theory, and the trial was moved to South Dakota even though chances for a fair and unbiased trial there were slim. The prosecution hand-picked a judge who previously had been known to make anti-Indian statements in his courtroom, so much so that the Eighth Circuit Court had to reverse some of his decisions. The jury was subjected to scare tactics, such as the blackening out of courtroom windows to protect them from imagined Indian snipers mad about the trial.

It was no surprise that Peltier was found guilty and sentenced to two life sentences. Peltier’s first appeal was held before the Freedom of Information Act helped get new documents released. When these documents finally were seen by the defense, they proved that Peltier’s gun had a different firing pin than the weapon used in the fight and that this information had been withheld on purpose. The defense also found that evidence had been fabricated, witnesses coerced, and government witnesses had been lying.

Peltier’s second appeal was lost by a mistake made by his own lawyer, and his third appeal lost because it was not proceeding fast enough. During the most recent appeal in June, 2000, Peltier’s doctor was there to show that he was getting no medical care in prison for his declining health problems. Amnesty International was there to argue his case, and 10,000 letters were written by the community and other organizations that supported his release. The parole examiner did not consider the pleas, but wrote the denial for parole while the presentation still was being made.

If none of this is enough to warrant a pardon, consider the fact that even the prosecutor has admitted that “we cannot prove who shot those agents.” A judge from the trial has said that Peltier might have been acquitted of the crime if the jury had seen the withheld evidence. Another incident pointing to the fact that the government had a vendetta against him happened in 1972, when two off-duty police officers beat him up and tried to have him charged with attempted murder.

Leonard Peltier has been in prison since 1976 for a crime he did not commit, for a government vendetta against the AIM and for the government’s misconceptions about Native Americans. To help correct this egregious error, log on to freepeltier.org, and join thousands of others who are tired of putting up with injustice.