{"id":29207,"date":"2024-07-03T20:18:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-04T01:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=29207"},"modified":"2024-07-03T20:20:39","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T01:20:39","slug":"native-american-activist-leonard-peltier-denied-parole-in-1975-fbi-killings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=29207","title":{"rendered":"Native American activist Leonard Peltier denied parole in 1975 FBI killings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">July 2 (Reuters) &#8211; Native American activist Leonard Peltier was denied parole on Tuesday after serving nearly five decades in federal prison in the 1975 killing of two FBI agents, a conviction that his supporters say was tainted by prosecutorial misconduct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Peltier, a member of the militant American Indian Movement in the 1970s, was part of a group of Native American men who engaged in a shootout with FBI Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in June 1975.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The agents, who went to the reservation in search of a fugitive, were killed, along with one of the Native American activists. Peltier, 79, has maintained that he was not the one who shot Coler and Williams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">In June, Peltier had his&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/native-american-activist-peltier-gets-parole-hearing-first-15-years-2024-06-10\/\">first parole hearing since 2009<\/a>&nbsp;at a federal prison in central Florida. FBI Director Christopher Wray, in a June 7 letter to the top federal parole official, called Peltier a &#8220;remorseless killer&#8221; who should never be freed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Peltier&#8217;s supporters say that prosecutors withheld critical evidence that would have been favorable to Peltier at trial and fabricated affidavits that painted him as guilty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Peltier&#8217;s lawyer plans to appeal the U.S. Parole Commission&#8217;s decision. Advocates, among them the late Nelson Mandela, a former prosecutor and judge involved in the case, have long called for his freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">&#8220;This decision is a missed opportunity for the United States to finally recognize the misconduct of the FBI and send a message to Indian Country regarding the impacts of the federal<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">government\u2019s actions and policies of the 1970s,&#8221; Kevin Sharp, Peltier&#8217;s lawyer and a former federal judge, said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Wray praised the decision, saying in a statement that justice prevailed again. &#8220;No amount of prison time will ever change the facts surrounding the murders of FBI Special Agents Coler and Williams,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The Parole Commission did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">In 1976, two other men were found not guilty in the deaths of the FBI agents on self-defense grounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Peltier fled to Canada before the trial. He was eventually extradited back to the U.S. and tried separately in 1977. He was found guilty and given two life sentences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Peltier has an interim hearing about his parole status scheduled for 2026 and a full hearing scheduled for 2039, NBC News reported, citing Sharp as a source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/world\/us\/native-american-activist-leonard-peltier-denied-parole-1975-fbi-killings-2024-07-02\/\">reuters<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>July 2 (Reuters) &#8211; Native American activist Leonard Peltier was denied parole on Tuesday after serving nearly five decades in federal prison in the 1975 killing of two FBI agents, a conviction that his supporters say was tainted by prosecutorial misconduct. Peltier, a member of the militant American Indian Movement in the 1970s, was part [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":29208,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2133,23366,2283,29442,29443,27251,2640],"class_list":["post-29207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-activist","tag-application","tag-day","tag-grief","tag-leonard-pelletier","tag-native-american","tag-parole"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29209,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29207\/revisions\/29209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}