ABSTRACT
American Indian activist Leonard Peltier lost his third bid for a new murder trial Wednesday when the Eighth US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the request. Peltier, who has been in prison for 17 years, is serving two consecutive life terms for the murder of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1975. Federal authorities maintain that Peltier and the other men wounded agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams in an ambush and then shot them in the head at close range. But Peltier argued that he and his codefendants didn't know Coler and Wilhams were federal agents and that they fired on them in self-defense. Thirteenth Ward Council Member Carol Johnson submitted a resolution calling for a new trial, but withdrew it when more than 60 FBI agents, Hennepin County sheriffs and other law enforcement officers made a show of force at the council meeting.
