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Please enter Valid details Ok got it! Enter Email ID Submit. I did. I did realize it was a lifetime appointment. You know, and the funny thing too is that you really work hard. Not just the lawyers over there, but the FBI that goes back to the White House; they look at those files again.
And then I had a full Senate vote, a full vote, voice vote on my confirmation. I jumped through all of those hoops; they satisfied themselves that I am the person for this job, and then they take it away from me.
They do that by creating these mandatory minimum sentences. So, you know, we end up—I end up having to deliver a message; it was not anything that had to do with my judgment, I delivered a message from Congress that said three strikes, even though they are nonviolent drug offenses, will get you life in prison.
And in this case it was for a year-old young man who did not deserve life in prison. In no way, shape, or form. He did deserve to go to prison; there was punishment. But punishment is not the only reason we sentence people. And the punishment should be—or the sentence should be, which encapsulates all these factors—one that is [sufficient], but not more harsh than necessary to fulfill the reasons that we are sentencing them. And that was not happening in this case.
You know, what am I doing up here? And not taking into consideration any of the factors that would otherwise come into play to use my judgment on what a sentence ought to be. And so that really was the catalyst for my frustration. What are we doing here? He did what, you know, what we expected him to do. He made a mistake, but not one that he should have to pay for, really, with his life. But now who is out? But at bottom, he was always a human being. And ultimately, we worked toward clemency, and that was granted with President Trump, granted clemency to Chris Young on his final day in office.
And so instead of a life sentence, Chris Young is out, being the productive person that I recognized him to be in the courtroom that day I sentenced him. And he is now 77 years old, far away from that place, in Florida, in the penitentiary. And this goes back, again, to this punitive attitude. Here is a person who was really—and you can discuss this much more authoritatively than I—never really much of a case that he was responsible for the killing of these FBI agents, but the other people they accused were not found guilty, and he became the fall person.
But the interesting thing is that it held for Democrats and Republicans. We know you are now appealing to President Biden for clemency for Leonard Peltier, but after all, President Biden was also responsible for passing legislation, or helping pass legislation, that caused a lot of people to be imprisoned for determined sentences and so forth.
And in looking back on this case, as I understand it, he was on the short list for Bill Clinton the night before, a much-troubled president accused of all sorts of things.
And that the FBI actually condoned a rally of FBI employees demanding that he not be pardoned, and that his name was taken off so the next morning it was not on the list.
Is that accurate? KS: Let me move the microphone. And that was never investigated. There was a tragedy that happened on the Jumping Bull Ranch that day, that gets lost in this rush to convict someone, anyone, for the death of two agents. As you go back, you know, it really goes back farther than Nixon. And the FBI was doing things domestically, with what they called counterintelligence, that they never should have been doing, with American citizens.
And you know, he was a firefighter when both the police and the fire department went on strike simultaneously in the seventies. I say all of that to say it was—it just seems to be, even in hindsight, a particularly chaotic and turbulent time. And so I was—it all was kind of running together after I left the bench, and there were some stories in the newspaper because Kim Kardashian had gotten involved in the Chris Young matter. Then I sit down and start reading the trial transcript, and I start to read through the newspaper articles of the time, read through, look at the photographs that are sent to me, FBI files; ultimately I end up going through thousands of pages of FBI documents that had been turned over to others—not me, turned over to others through a Freedom of Information Act request, something we call FOIA.
What country are we in? This reads like a movie, you know, that seems so far-fetched, because it was not something that I had experience with. Unfortunately, the more I dug into it and the other cases, it was all too common. And I agreed to take it on pro bono. RS: Well, another person of legal expertise that has gotten involved in this case is the U.
I mean, this is a—this is a movie, unquestionably. We somehow, people get put away, and out of sight, out of mind. And you know, people have to be reminded that that respect and sympathy for the Native American Civil Rights Movement is a recent phenomenon. We were all raised, after all, on the wonderful white people killing the terrible redskins, you know, the Washington football team.
And that these were savages, mentioned in the Declaration of Independence as savages, you know. And now of course we have major scholars like Benjamin Madley and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and others, you know, doing books on the genocide against Native Americans and the horrible destructiveness and so forth. But at the time of this trial, there was no such consciousness. And in fact, J. And the person, the U.
I write today from a position rare for a former prosecutor, to beseech you to commute the sentence of a man who I helped put behind bars. I have been fortunate enough to see this country and its prevailing attitudes about Native Americans progress dramatically over the last 46 years.
Here is the attorney, U. So what is it? These presidents just are afraid to take on the FBI? The problem is that they have this position of power where you have to be above that. And when they are not, you know, serious consequences exist. That is serious misconduct, and if that had happened today, as we saw with General Flynn, right—regardless of what you think of General Flynn, they withheld exculpatory evidence.
That ought to get you, at the very least, a new trial. But you just mentioned the other side. It was James H. Reynolds, who was the U. However, Mr. Peltier has been labeled, and more importantly was sentenced, as a cold-blooded murderer based on a theory that we were forced to drop on appeal. He has served more than 46 years on the basis of minimal evidence, a result that I strongly doubt would be upheld in any court today.
But how in the world could anybody—Republican, Democrat, any president read this letter? Is that it? Reynolds came on right after the trial was over, so he took over post-trial motions and all the appeals. But the U. Right, they had pressured particularly these three young boys that were at the Jumping Bull Ranch that day to say things that simply were not true, and the boys recanted later.
So he would not have been privy to the misconduct that happened, or that did happen with the grand jury in order to obtain this indictment. But what Reynolds does then learn is that there was exculpatory evidence withheld. Now, the U. The FBI at the time knew that. And so—. RS: They knew that there was no evidence that Leonard Peltier had shot anyone, and yet he was going to be put away for life for having supposedly—because two FBI agents died.
RS: And by the way, let me just throw in here, a special responsibility. But this is the same group that got—. KS: They know.
They knew what they were doing. But who members of the FBI had been killed. So they changed it to aiding and abetting; he was there. But then the question is—. Who did he aid and abet? His codefendants were acquitted based on self-defense.
There was no crime. And he knows that. It is ridiculous that he would say that in response. And it shows you the level that they did not care who they convicted, but that they got a conviction.
So, but right, I think you were about to ask me that—Lynn Crooks, the lead trial lawyer in the case, later said: We do not know who killed the agents. Nevertheless, 46 years later, Leonard sits in a maximum-security prison. What danger is he? No need for him to be in prison at all. KS: Well, clemency is an umbrella term. Commuting is the remedy, part of the remedy, and pardon is another remedy.
RS: OK. And the sanctity of his agency was the goal, was the important thing. You know, their belief was that the agency, the FBI, was the only part of American government that was not corrupted. And they were holding the—they were the dam against all these corrupt forces out there, based upon a democratic political system, and Congressional people asking nasty questions, and the public daring to challenge and hold them accountable. They did not believe they should be held accountable, except internally.
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