Parole Denied for Native American Activist Convicted in 1975 Killings

A Native American activist who was convicted of killing two federal agents nearly 50 years ago has once again been denied parole, the U.S. Parole Commission announced on Tuesday. The decision came despite decades of complaints from supporters that the activist, Leonard Peltier, did not get a fair trial and was unjustly convicted.

Mr. Peltier, 79, was given two life sentences for his role in a shootout between activists and F.B.I. agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975 that left two agents and an activist dead. His health has greatly declined in recent years, after multiple bouts of Covid-19, a stroke and an aortic aneurysm.

Mr. Peltier’s supporters — who over the years have come to include members of Congress, the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, former members of the prosecution and the judge who originally sentenced him — say that F.B.I. agents coerced witnesses in the case and that prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence.

“Obviously, they deserve justice,” James Mazzola, deputy director of research at Amnesty International USA, said of the families of the federal agents who were killed. But keeping Mr. Peltier in prison, he said, “is not justice.”

Supporters of Mr. Peltier have tried repeatedly over the years to win his release through parole or through a presidential pardon or commutation of his sentence.

In a letter to the Justice Department in 2022, Christopher Wray, director of the F.B.I., firmly opposed granting Mr. Peltier clemency.

“Peltier is a remorseless killer who brutally murdered two of our own — Special Agents Jack R. Coler and Ronald Williams,” Mr. Wray wrote. “Commutation of Peltier’s sentence is wholly unjustified. It ‘would be shattering’ to the victim’s families and an affront to the rule of law,” the director wrote, citing a letter from one Mr. Coler’s family members.

Mr. Peltier has admitted to participating in the 1975 shootout, but he has insisted that he acted in self-defense and did not kill the agents.

Of the more than 30 people who were present during the shootout, Mr. Peltier was the only one to be convicted of a crime for his role. Two other Native American activists were tried for murder, but were acquitted. Exculpatory evidence admitted in their trials was excluded from Mr. Peltier’s, which his supporters cite as one way his trial was unfair.

His conviction hinges on the fact that he was armed and present at the shootout that day, James Reynolds, a former U.S. attorney in Iowa, said in a 2022 interview. Mr. Reynolds, whose predecessor, Evan Hultman, handled the original prosecution of Mr. Peltier, said no evidence existed tying Mr. Peltier to the fatal shots.

The parole board held a hearing on Mr. Peltier’s latest application on June 10 at the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Florida. Kevin Sharp, Mr. Peltier’s lawyer and a former federal judge, said the hearing went much the way previous hearings had.

Among those present were relatives of the two agents who died, a representative from the F.B.I., and a doctor who testified about Mr. Peltier’s declining health.

Steven Van Zandt, the guitarist for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, has been a longtime supporter of Mr. Peltier and was scheduled to testify at the June 10 hearing until the parole commission cut short the number of witnesses who could appear.

The way Mr. Peltier’s case was handled by the F.B.I. was “really, really disturbing,” Mr. Van Zandt said in an interview, “and I think hurts the credibility of the F.B.I. to even try and defend it.”

The F.B.I. did not respond to a request for comment.

Denying Mr. Peltier parole, Mr. Van Zandt said before the board’s decision was announced, would be “the final terrible chapter in one of the worst, most terrible chapters of American history.”