White House Considers Clemency

The White House says President Clinton will review pending requests for executive clemency before he leaves office in January, including that of Leonard Peltier, the American Indian activist convicted of murdering two FBI agents in South Dakota.

The president "will focus on as many clemency cases as he can after the election and that will be one of them," White House spokesman Daniel Cruise said Sunday. He added that it was unlikely the president would be able to review any clemency requests made late in the year.

Also Sunday, the White House released the transcript of Clinton's Nov. 7 interview with radio station WBAI-FM in New York City in which the president was asked about the Peltier case.

Mr. Clinton said then that he would review all clemency applications "and see what the merits dictate…based on the evidence."

Asked specifically about Peltier, Mr. Clinton said he has "never had time actually to sit down myself and review that case."

"I know it's very important to a lot of people, maybe on both sides of the issue," he said. "And I think I owe it to them to give it an honest look-see."

On June 26, 1975, FBI agents Ronald A. Williams and Jack R. Coler pursued a robbery suspect into the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. A shootout erupted with activists from the American Indian Movement.

Two suspects were acquitted and a third freed for lack of evidence.

Peltier, after fleeing to Canada and being extradited to the United States, was convicted and sentenced to consecutive life terms in 1977, despite defense claims that evidence against him had been falsified. Peltier has maintained his innocence.

Peltier, 56, is serving the terms at the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan. He has suffered from health problems in recent years.

In June, a parole examiner recommended that Peltier's sentences be continued until his next full parole hearing in 2008.

Earlier this month, Amnesty International urged Mr. Clinton to pardon Peltier, saying his case was riddled with prosecutorial misconduct, perjury, fabrication of evidence and suppression of exculpatory evidence.

Amnesty International said the trial judge refused to let a witness that could have swayed the jury's opinion take the stand and that prosecutors withheld a ballistics report that could have proved Peltier was not the killer.

The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee says the FBI singled out Peltier as a leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM) and had made him and other AIM members the subjects of the so-called COINTELPRO program. The group said the program was aimed at silencing AIM through attacks and arrests.

COINTELPRO was a counterintelligence program conducted by the FBI during the 1950s and 60s. The FBI claims it was used "to counteract domestic terrorism and conduct investigations of individuals and organizations who threatened terroristic violence."

In addition to Peltier's case, the president will have an opportunity to review a clemency request from at least one man on federal death row. David Paul Hammer, whose scheduled Nov. 15 execution has been postponed, has requested clemency. Another federal inmate, Juan Raul Garza, is due to die Dec. 12.

The last execution carried out by the federal government was 37 years ago, when Victor Feguer was hanged in Iowa for kidnapping and killing a doctor.