President Obama granted clemency to 231 prisoners—the most individual acts of clemency granted in a single day by any president in U.S. history. Obama pardoned 78 people and shortened the sentences of 153 others convicted of federal crimes. He has now pardoned a total of 148 people during his presidency and has shortened the sentences of 1,176 people, including 395 serving life sentences. Most of the cases have involved people serving long sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. According to the White House, Obama has commuted more sentences than the last 11 presidents combined.
But Obama has taken no action on several of the most high-profile prisoners seeking pardons or clemency. Hundreds of thousands of people have signed petitions asking President Obama to release Puerto Rican independence activist Oscar López Rivera, Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning and Native American activist Leonard Peltier.
Martin Garbus talking:
He was convicted in 1975. He was involved in the Wounded—shortly after the Wounded Knee shootout. The evidence in the case, acknowledged by the government and acknowledged by the federal judges, is that the FBI does not know who shot the two people, that the ballistics do not support the argument that Leonard Peltier did it.
The important thing at this time, for your listeners, is to write to the president. Amnesty International has a site which allows you to join their petition. Over 100,000 people thus far have joined the petition. There are about 300,000 additional letters. So this is a case of a man who’s been in jail now for 44 years, six years in solitary, a case that one of the judges who presided in the case, the appellate judge, Judge [Heaney], said that Peltier should be released because of the wrongful conduct of the judge.
The wrongful conduct was not producing at the trial the ballistics, which show that it could not have been Peltier’s gun that did the shooting. The wrongful conduct was—and the government acknowledges at this point—using false affidavits, both in the case and to extradite him from Canada, where he had been led. In this particular case, two other people were charged for the case, convicted—murder. Both of those people were found innocent.
So he was extradited and tried separately. But the proof against the other defendants was that it was their guns, etc., etc. Nonetheless, in part because of the wrongful conduct of the FBI.
The withholding of ballistics, the refusal—they didn’t turn the ballistics over to the U.S. attorney. The other wrongful conduct was it was they who got the false affidavits, acknowledged to be false and found by the court to be false. So, the only reason he was convicted was, A, the political atmosphere of the time, and, two, they succeeded, the government, in having the case tried before a judge, a very anti-Indian judge, rather than the judge who was involved in the acquittal of the other two defendants.
Norman Patrick Brown talking:
it was a horrific day. It was a tragic day, for we lost three good men that day. And my role there was as the youngest fighter there of a group of people who were encamped there. We were a spiritual encampment, there to protect the Oglala people, the traditional people, and AIM members from their brutality, of the BIA police GOON squad, which were armed and trained by the FBI.
To this day, it’s been a tough life for many of us. I just want to state that, from that day that the agents lost their lives, we’ve prayed for them continuously, and we feel for their families. And we’re not happy about that day. I’m not happy of that day.
And, you know, I was used as a federal witness. I was coerced. My rights were not respected, my constitutional right to a lawyer. My life was threatened. My mother’s life was threatened also, my family. And I basically said some things that were not true. And I have since recanted those statements in court. In fact, the first two trials of Dino Butler and Bob Robideau, Leonard Peltier’s co-defendants, one of the lawyers had asked the jurors—asked the jurors who was the most believable witness, and they said Norman Brown. And he said, “See, Norman, all these years of the suffering and the hardships of your life from this case was because of your statement that we created, the self-defense statement that acquitted Bob and Dino that day.”
So, you know, I guess what I did that day is, the shooting happened, and I ran up there, and immediately we were surrounded. And we exchanged gunfire. And I was not there at the time that the agents lost their life and Joe lost their life. To this day, I don’t want to know, and I do not know.
But one thing I want to say, Amy, is that there’s this demonization of Leonard as a thug, as a murderous criminal, but that’s far from the truth. He is a very kind man. He’s a generous man. He’s a very funny person. You know, his people knew him as the person that he was. He was very kindhearted. And that was the reason why he went up to Pine Ridge, because the elders had asked him to lead this effort in protecting the various communities from the murders, from the gunfire, from the beatings, that were directed at the American Indian Movement members. So, I was a part of that group. There was many of us that were a part of that group.
Martin Garbus talking:
the United States Civil Rights Commission afterwards concluded that the FBI was an occupying force on the reservation, that they had free rein and were arresting people and beating people. And that was the situation when Wounded Knee started.
There’s one other thing I’d like to mention. This was the time of Nixon. This was the time of Alexander Haig. And they called out the military. It’s called a posse comitatus. They called out the military to shoot at the Wounded Knee Indians, who were encircled, so that you had—by the way, President Clinton, we understand, was about to grant clemency. And when that happened, the FBI staged a demonstration outside of the White House, 500 men with guns—first time that has ever been done. Clinton withdrew back.
he had a whole bunch of pardons. Marc Rich was a corrupt person, involved heavily with Clinton, someone who had been a donor to his campaigns, no question about the rightness of his conviction. A millionaire financier, fugitive from justice, living in Switzerland.
No support at all for his granting pardon and clemency. And then he denied it to Peltier. He told us—Clinton—within the period before he was going to step down, because of the election in 2000, that he would grant clemency to Leonard Peltier. And it was clear that it was the FBI demonstration. And the FBI opposes now, and they have started a letter-writing campaign to Obama saying, “Do not release him, do not release him.” That’s why it’s so important that your viewers respond, either by going to the Amnesty International site, but by themselves writing to the president.
if it’s not done now, President Trump is highly unlikely. The next pardon is 2024. Leonard is sick now. He won’t make it to his next pardon. He won’t make it through a Trump presidency, I fear.
we have submitted it to the pardon attorneys, who then have to send it on to the president. We understand that it has left the pardon office and is now on the president’s desk.
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Martin Garbus
one of the country’s leading trial lawyers and lead counsel for Leonard Peltier.
Norman Patrick Brown
survivor of the 1975 Pine Ridge shootout.
— source democracynow.org