Archive for Thursday, December 7, 2000
FBI chief asks Clinton not to release Peltier
December 7, 2000
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Washington — In a pointed plea, FBI Director Louis Freeh is urging President Clinton not to commute the life prison term of an American Indian activist serving a life term for killing two FBI agents.
Freeing Leonard Peltier would "signal disrespect" for law enforcement and the public, he wrote Clinton.
"Mr. President, there is no issue more deeply felt within the FBI or more widely shared within the law enforcement community than the belief that this attack by Peltier was nothing less than a complete affront to our cherished system of government under the rule of law," Freeh wrote on Tuesday.
The White House said late last month that Clinton will review pending requests for executive clemency, including Peltier's, before he leaves office in January.
Asked Nov. 7 about Peltier Clinton said he would review all clemency applications "and see what the merits dictate ... based on the evidence.
"I know it's very important to a lot of people, maybe on both sides of the issue," Clinton said. "And I think I owe it to them to give it an honest look-see."
Freeh wrote the president that the families of slain agents Ron Williams and Jack Coler "respectfully plead to you that the vicious murderer of a son and a father not be heroically elevated above the cold and hardened criminal he chose to be."
On June 26, 1975, Williams and Coler pursued a robbery suspect into the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. A shootout erupted with activists from the American Indian Movement. Two suspects were acquitted and a third freed for lack of evidence.
Peltier, after fleeing to Canada and being extradited to the United States, was convicted and sentenced to consecutive life terms in 1977, despite defense claims that evidence against him had been falsified.
Peltier, 56, is serving the terms at the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan. He has suffered from health problems in recent years. In June, a parole examiner recommended that Peltier's sentences be continued until his next full parole hearing in 2008.
MORE: www.freepeltier.org
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