Native Rights: Fed Prosecutor Condones Fabrications

Native Rights: Fed Prosecutor Condones Fabrications

An Assistant United States Attorney, a man named Lynn Crooks, who put together the Leonard Peltier case for the government, said in an interview on the CBS television program "60 Minutes" that government officials are justified in fabricating evidence against people who they believe are guilty.

Here are Crooks' exact words, in response to a question about certain coerced testimony and false ballistics evidence in the Peltier case:

"If everything they say is right on that, doesn't bother my conscience one bit. The man's a murderer. He got convicted on fair evidence. Doesn't bother my conscience one whit. Now I don't agree that we did anything wrong with that, but I can tell you it don't bother my conscience if we did."

Crooks understood he was being interviewed on camera for television; in other words, this was not a hidden camera or "sting" interview. The interview was broadcast on 24 May 1992, but it was originally taped in 1989 for the CBS program "West 57th." Peltier's trial was conducted in 1977. Peltier was given two consecutive life sentences and is still in prison.

Crooks was the prosecutor, but the major investigator was Richard Held, of the San Francisco office of the FBI, who has been an operator for the government program to destroy dissent in this country, CONINTLPRO. As will be remembered, Agent Held is also the chief investigator of the Earth First bombing case in Oakland, where the victims were arrested and charged, and no investigation into who really blew up those two activists has ever been done.

When Crooks appeared before a judge in 1991 to argue that Peltier was convicted on fair evidence, he made the following astonishing statement: "My personal perspective is that he went down there and blew those agents' heads off. All evidence pointed to that. But we didn't prove it [1]." In this statement, Crooks admitted he could not prove the charge he used to send a man to prison for life.

Background on the Peltier case:

Two FBI agents were killed on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota on 26 June 1975. The killings followed a 30-minute gunfight between the two FBI agents and a group of Indians, who claimed the FBI agents fired first. The gunfight took place on a large tract of private property where the Indians were living. The Indians claimed that the FBI agents showed up that day intending to cause trouble, which if true would explain why a large number of federal, state, and local law enforcement officers were already in position nearby when the shooting started.

Peltier admitted he was one of the Indians who shot at the agents (from a distance of about 150 yards). "I never even fired at them, not directly; I just kept shooting over their heads, trying to keep them from firing at us [2]." During the shootout, both agents were wounded from long-range fire. Eventually, two unidentified Indians approached the agents and shot them dead at point-blank range; this was the precise deed for which Peltier was convicted. An unidentified Indian (not Peltier) who recently confessed to killing the agents at close range said he fired in self-defense. Two other Indians were tried for the killings, but only Peltier was convicted.

A third victim, an Indian, was killed that day, but the government never made any serious attempt to investigate wrongdoing with regard to the killing of the Indian. The government never doubted its own initial hypothesis that all of the FBI agents and police officers who fired weapons that day acted only in self defence or to subdue hostility. However, it would appear that the hostilities were at least instigated by government officials, whose true underlying motive involved mineral deposits on Indian land.

Regarding the evidence fabricated for the Peltier case:

(1) COERCED TESTIMONY. An Indian woman signed an affidavit asserting that she saw Peltier shoot the two FBI agents point-blank. It appears that all sides later agreed that this testimony is false. The "witness" later claimed she never even saw Peltier before the trial, and that FBI agents coerced her to sign the affidavit. The government used her affidavit to extradite Peltier from Canada, but they did not use it in the murder trial, apparently because the prosecution knew it would not withstand scrutiny. However, had she not been coerced by the FBI give false testimony, Peltier would not have been extradited and therefore would not have been sentenced to life in prison for a crime he probably did not commit.

(2) FALSE BALLISTICS. Assistant United States Attorney Lynn Crooks said the ballistics evidence was "perhaps the most important piece of evidence in this case [3]." The ballistics evidence consisted of a cartridge casing, found near the victims' bodies, that the government claimed was fired from a certain rifle which, they claimed, was in the hands of Leonard Peltier during the shootout. It now appears that the government could not really prove that Peltier ever handled that particular rifle. More importantly, an FBI Lab report obtained under the Freedom Of Information Act after the trial by Peltier's defence, states that the casing could NOT be associated with that rifle, which means our government lied in court to convict Peltier.

References:

[1] Peter Matthiessen. "In the Spirit Of Crazy Horse." Page 590.
[2] Peter Matthiessen. "In the Spirit Of Crazy Horse." Page 509.
[3] Peter Matthiessen. "In the Spirit Of Crazy Horse." Page 484.