Leonard Peltier Suffering, Faces Medical Crisis

by Nicholas Wilson

Leonard Peltier, Native American activist and America's best known political prisoner, is telling friends that prison red tape prevents him from getting urgently needed medical help for complications that developed after unsuccessful jaw surgery in a prison hospital.

"Malicious" is how Peltier describes the treatment he received at the federal prison medical center in Springfield, Missouri, including two jaw surgeries and repeated very high doses of radiation. Not only was the treatment unsuccessful, but complications have made his condition even worse than before.

Now in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, he is in constantly increasing pain and can't open his jaws to eat or chew. He must take in food through a gap left by missing teeth, then mash his food with his tongue before swallowing. Prison authorities refuse to run his meals through a blender, Castillo says.

Peltier has asked to be treated by famed Mayo Clinic surgeon Dr. Eugene Keller, who has reviewed Peltier's medical records and agreed to treat him at a federal prison facility near the Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

But before Peltier can receive any further medical treatment, the Bureau of Prisons requires him to sign a release which allows them to send him wherever they choose.

They have told him they may send him back to Springfield, and he is afraid he'll be killed, according to Castillo.

"It's like Catch-22," Castillo said. "If he doesn't sign the release he gets no medical treatment. If he does sign, the treatment he gets may be worse than none."

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, one of Peltier's lawyers, told the Monitor on June 18 that Peltier's medical condition is very serious and could be fatal. "His situation is highly conducive to that," Clark said. Asked if he planned legal action to get Peltier to the Mayo Clinic, Clark replied, "Well, that could be a fight. You try to negotiate it out because there are so many loopholes. They could claim that they have offered treatment and he rejected it." But, he said, "All they have to do is say they'll send him to Rochester and he'll sign the release."

In a memo earlier this week, Clark wrote, "Prisoners have the right to petition for care by the doctor of their choice if they are not provided the accepted standard of care. That certainly applies to this case, as the Springfield facility staff stated they are unable to provide the required care for Leonard." This last was newly learned information.

Clark's memo also said Peltier is unable to open his mouth to receive urgently needed care for two abscessed teeth, putting him in danger of potentially fatal septicemia, infection spreading through the blood stream to vital organs such as the heart.

Peltier has been a federal prisoner 22 years, sentenced to two consecutive life terms for the murder of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975. He denies any guilt and FBI files obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that exonerating evidence was withheld by the government during his trial.

The files also show that the American Indian Movement (AIM) was the target of a covert FBI COINTELPRO-style operation to disrupt and neutralize it. Although 12,000 pages of the RESMURS (FBI code for Reservation Murders) files were released under the FOIA request, an additional 5,000 pages were withheld on the basis that revealing them would endanger "national security." Castillo suspects there was federal infiltration of Peltier's legal team, as was revealed in the case of Geronimo JiJaga Pratt, the former Black Panther framed for murder whose conviction was recently overturned.

In the two years prior the fatal 1975 incident, some 40 murders had taken place on the reservation at the hands of a goon squad covertly armed and financed by the FBI and controlled by Oglala Tribal Chairman Richard Wilson. Elders who wanted to pursue their traditional culture called on AIM to send people to protect them from Wilson's armed thugs, and Peltier was one of the AIM activists who responded to that call for help.

On June 26, 1975 two FBI agents pursued a red pickup onto the reservation. It's not clear who fired first, but the agents were first wounded in an exchange of gunfire, then finished off at close range. (A young AIM activist was also killed in the shootout, but no one was ever charged.)

Three other AIM activists were later indicted along with Peltier for the FBI slayings. Two were tried first and acquitted on the basis of self-defense by all-white Iowa juries. Within weeks, the government dropped charges against the third activist.

Peter Matthiessen's book, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, quotes a federal document showing that the decision to drop charges was made at a meeting including FBI Director Clarence Kelley, COINTELPRO architect Richard G. Held, and U.S. Attorney Evan Hultman, among others. Their stated reason was "so that the full prosecutive weight of the Federal Government could be directed against Peltier." Peltier was their last chance to convict someone for the slayings.

The new judge, Nixon-appointee Paul Benson, a former North Dakota Attorney General, moved the trial to his hometown of Fargo, North Dakota, known for anti-Indian sentiment. Judge Benson showed bias in his judicial discretion, granting most prosecution motions and rejecting those of the defense. He blocked the defense from putting on evidence of FBI coercion of and deals with witnesses, and fabrication and suppression of evidence.

Judge Benson ruled that no mention could be made of the evidence in the first trial, which acquitted the other two activists. Thus the prosecution was able to suppress evidence that an FBI agent reported the red pickup leaving the scene immediately after the shootings. This was the truck which the two slain agents had followed onto the site, and it had driven down to where the agents were finished off at close range. No evidence connected Peltier to the red pickup. But the judge allowed none of this exonerating evidence in Peltier's trial. When the jury voted guilty, Judge Benson gave him the maximum sentence then allowed for murder.

• 1982: Peltier's lawyers filed a motion for a new trial in federal court in Fargo, charging government suppression of exculpatory documents and use of fabricated evidence to get a conviction. Judge Benson denied a motion that he remove himself from the case based on his earlier out-of-court derogatory remarks about Peltier. Citing national security, he then denied a motion for the release of the 6000 additional pages of RESMURS documents. Finally, Judge Benson denied the motion for a new trial.
• 1983: The appeals court ordered Judge Benson to hold hearings on "new" evidence -- a 1975 FBI teletype which stated that the gun allegedly used by Peltier could not be linked to a critical shell casing found near the bodies. This evidence contradicted previous trial testimony by an FBI expert which one of the prosecutors had told the jury was "perhaps the most important evidence in this case."
• 1984: The evidentiary hearing took place under a great show of courtroom security, including thirty armed federal marshals. In the hearing the FBI expert who authored the teletype and who had also signed a ballistics report used in Peltier's extradition was shown to have confused and misstated the facts under oath. But Judge Benson again refused to order a new trial.
• 1985: In arguments before the appeals court Peltier's chief counsel William Kunstler recapped the grave discrepancies in the government's case. Youthful witnesses against Peltier have since given sworn statements that they were coerced, threatened and intimidated into false testimony by FBI agents. A just-released mental patient was similarly frightened by FBI agents into making a false eyewitness affidavit used to win Peltier's extradition from Canada. Without the crucial ballistics evidence there was nothing to support prosecutor Lynn Crooks' closing argument to the trial jury that Peltier was "the man who came down and killed those FBI agents in cold blood." At the appeal hearing Crooks exclaimed, "But we can't prove who shot those agents!"
• 1986-7: The appeals court decision concluded that the government "withheld evidence from the defense favorable to Peltier," which "cast a strong doubt on the government's case." The court found "there is a possibility that a jury would have acquitted Leonard Peltier," if they had known of the suppressed evidence. The court essentially acknowledged that the government had used dishonest means to get a conviction, yet, once again, the appeals court denied the appeal for a new trial. It concluded that the judicial standard of proof for ordering a new trial had not been met.

The appeals court also denied a subsequent petition for a rehearing en banc, before all the judges of the appeals court. In October 1987 the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, thereby ending Peltier's judicial remedies in the U.S. Courts.

Clark promised to "appeal with a full scale attack on the proceedings," and if there is an adverse decision by the Parole Commission, "it will be appealed to federal courts with a comprehensive attack on the ruling in Leonard's case and the legality of the Parole Commission as it now functions."

Clark commented that the Peltier and other reservation murders cases were "miserably mishandled (by the government), but that's probably the smaller part of the injustice. The presence and role of the FBI from the very beginning was wrongfully motivated and wrongfully carried out. If you look at all the evidence there can be no question that the FBI carried out an extensive and violent covert operation targeting AIM. It included arming and funding goons in an effort to control the reservation by fear and force. That was a direct contributing factor in the great number of the more than 40 murders in the two years between the Wounded Knee incident and Leonard's conflict."

Noted San Francisco trial lawyer J. Tony Serra confirmed to the Monitor recently that he agreed to represent Peltier if he can get a new trial. Regular Monitor readers will immediately recognize Serra as an attorney with a good track record representing Native Americans accused of killing cops. Last year he helped get "Bear" Lincoln acquitted of murdering a Mendocino County deputy sheriff. Earlier, Serra won a new trial and an acquittal for Patrick "Hooty" Croy, who had been on death row for ten years for the killing of a Shasta County deputy. Serra was instrumental last year in getting Norma Jean Croy released from prison where she was sentenced for the same incident as her brother.

Peltier supporters are holding a June 27 Washington, D.C., rally to mark the anniversary of the shootout at Pine Ridge and call for Peltier's release. A major front in the effort to free Peltier is a petition to President Clinton for a pardon. Although such requests are normally decided within several months to a year, Peltier's request has languished on Clinton's desk during his whole term of office. Clark points out that the only opposition to a pardon comes from the FBI -- "But, of course, they are formidable."

His supporters urge people to write the President in support of a pardon, and if possible to come to the rally. In a letter they write, "We are currently asking supporters to step up the fight for his release more than ever. Mention Leonard's health whenever writing to public officials and speaking on his behalf. Needless to say Leonard's suffering is a form of cruel and unusual punishment for a crime which he did not commit."