Isle attorney fights for
release of Native
American activist

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By Mary Adamski
madamski@starbulletin.com

Honolulu attorney Eric Seitz has launched a mainland court challenge that aims to get Native American activist Leonard Peltier released after 25 years in prison.

Seitz filed a motion Friday in Fargo, N.D., asking that Peltier's sentence be reduced from two consecutive life terms to concurrent sentences which would allow for parole.

Peltier was convicted of murder in the 1975 shootings of two FBI agents on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

"The government now concedes they don't know who fired the shots," Seitz said yesterday. "I think what happened to him is atrocious, one of the worst miscarriages of justice.

"He was convicted on overwhelming ballistic evidence that he fired the shots. The theory that the government presented was that it was his gun and he went at close range and executed them. But ballistics evidence revealed after trial did not support the theory."

"The shooting happened from a distance," said Seitz, who specializes in civil rights issues and has been involved since 1989 in efforts by the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee to free the activist they claim is a political prisoner.

Seitz said his motion argues that the theory of an execution-style slaying persuaded the judge to levy consecutive rather than concurrent sentences.

"No one has reviewed the sentence knowing that theory is no longer valid. Leonard was an aider and abettor involved in a shootout. He has said on national TV that he fired his gun and they fired back at him. Two other people who made a similar admission were acquitted in a separate trial. It took place in the midst of tense times when there were more killings at Pine Ridge than in Detroit."

Seitz said an earlier motion for a new trial was turned down by a judge who was upheld by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The judge who sentenced Peltier is no longer on the bench. Seitz said he will go to North Dakota when a judge sets a hearing on his motion.

The shootings occurred when federal agents became involved in a fight among factions on the Indian reservation over the sale of tribal lands bearing natural mineral resources.