FBI sends flawed email in response to media inquiry about the status of Leonard Peltier’s clemency

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In a strange turn of events, when HuffPost recently asked for the status of an inmate’s petition for clemency, instead of receiving a response from the federal Office of the Pardon Attorney, the FBI sent an email.

But as the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction. The inmate in question is Leonard Peltier, a Native American rights activist who supporters say has been wrongfully imprisoned for the past 46 years. Now 77 years old, he has been locked up since 1975, making him the longest-serving political prisoner in U.S. history.

HuffPost reports that in late March they emailed the Office of the Pardon Attorney to check on the status of Peltier’s review process, filed by his attorney in July. They received an email response from the FBI office.

Peltier was convicted for the deaths of two FBI agents who died during a 1975 shoot-out on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Peltier has denied being involved in the shooting.

RELATED STORY: ‘He doesn’t deserve this,’ activist says after learning Leonard Peltier has COVID-19

The FBI’s email to HuffPost:

“The FBI remains resolute against the commutation of Leonard Peltier’s sentence for murdering FBI Special Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams at South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. We must never forget or put aside that Peltier intentionally and mercilessly murdered these two young men and has never expressed remorse for his ruthless actions.

“Peltier’s conviction, rightly and fairly obtained, still stands, and has withstood numerous appeals to multiple courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. No amount of prison time changes the facts surrounding Coler and Williams’ deaths and commuting Peltier’s sentence now would only serve to diminish the brutality of his crime and the suffering of their surviving families and the FBI family.”

Justin Mazzola, deputy director for research at Amnesty International USA, told HuffPost the email from the FBI is not only outdated but also factually incorrect.

“Forty-five years later, this statement does not even come close to aligning with what we now know about the environment and events leading up to and on Pine Ridge that fateful day, let alone all of the information we now know about the trial and case against Leonard Peltier,” Mazzola said.

“It denies the FBI’s own role in using perjured testimony to secure his extradition from Canada, the suppression of potentially exonerating evidence by the [Department of Justice] attorneys in his case. … Even the prosecutors subsequently admitted that they have no idea who shot the agents at point-blank range,” Mazzola adds.

In 2020, Peltier’s attorney Kevin Sharp told the Tennessee Lookout that what happened to Peltier equals a “mountain of constitutional violations.” He added that the government eventually dropped the murder conviction because, through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, it turned out the FBI had withheld “damning exculpatory evidence” showing that the gun used to shoot the two agents did not belong to Peltier. Additionally, according to Sharp, several witnesses recanted their testimonies, saying, “We were threatened by the FBI. So we said we saw things that we did not see.”

And it seems it has been the fear of the FBI that has kept Peltier behind bars for so long. Sharp says at one point former President Clinton was considering Peltier’s case, but did nothing. Hope sprung again during former President Obama’s terms in office, but again, nothing was done.

In an early February White House press briefing, press secretary Jen Psaki was asked whether President Biden knew about or had been briefed on Peltier’s case. Psaki said at the time she had no idea whether or not the president had been spoken to or about his case.

International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee (ILPDC) co-director Carol Gokee told Daily Kos in February that she was worried about Peltier after learning he’d tested positive for COVID-19.

“Leonard has been begging and pleading for years and nothing has been accomplished,” Gokee told Daily Kos. “He just keeps saying, ‘Get me home so I don’t die here.’”

ILPDC has been demanding that Peltier either be released or placed in a more adequate facility.

“If Leonard Peltier dies in prison, God help us,” Gokee said at a recent press conference. “Because America is watching. Joe Biden, this is up to you,” she added.

Peltier’s last chance for clemency is from Biden. Dozens of people have signed petitions in support of his release. With Deb Haaland, the first Native American Cabinet secretary, leading the Interior Department, there’s a sliver of hope to save Peltier from dying in prison.

Gokee told Daily Kos that after a press conference ILPDC gave, “Joe Biden decided to ask Senator Jon Ossoff to lead up the judiciary committee with Dick Durbin on prison conditions, misconduct and Covid. We have been giving them all kinds of information. Let’s see if they do a good job with this. “