A:  (Per Anton Treuer in Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask)

In 1975, two FBI agents were murdered in South Dakota. This event occurred shortly after a major police and military action at Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Several different reports and investigations, well synthesized for the public in the video documentary Incident at Oglala and a special on 60 Minutes, have now made it clear that the two most damaging pieces of evidence used to convict Leonard Peltier of the murders should not have been admissible in court. One was a ballistics report that was clearly fabricated by the FBI. The other was an affidavit from a woman named Myrtle Poor Bear, who later stated that the FBI coerced her by threatening to permanently remove her children from her home.

Many people feel that Leonard Peltier was made into a scapegoat and punished for a crime he did not commit. Those who argue for Leonard Peltier’s release also often state that we owe it to the families of the FBI agents who were murdered to findtheir true killers. If Leonard Peltier had received a fair trial or a retrial without the pieces of clearly tainted evidence, he probably would not have been convicted. But did he kill those FBI agents? Maybe not, but I don’t know.