Leonard Peltier is an American activist and member of the American Indian Movement (AIM) who was convicted and sentenced in 1977 to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment for the murder of two FBI agents who were killed during a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975. On June 26 1975, FBI agents Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams were searching for a young Pine Ridge man wanted for assault and robbery. They were following a red pickup they believed the man was driving, when they had come under high powered rifle fire. At 4:31 p.m., authorities recovered the bodies of Williams and Coler at their vehicle, and at 6 p.m. laid down a cloud of tear gas and stormed the Jumping Bull houses, finding one of the shooters bodies. The FBI reported Williams had received a defensive wound from a bullet which passed through his right hand into his head, killing him instantly. Coler, incapacitated from earlier bullet wounds, had been shot twice in the head execution style. In total 125 bullet holes were found in the agents' vehicles, many from a .223 rifle. The FBI investigation concluded the agents were executed at close range by the same .223 caliber rifle. Peltier fled to Hinton, Alberta, where he was hiding out at a friend's cabin. Peltier was then arrested and extradited from Canada on February 6, 1976. He tried to fight the extradition to the United States, and while in this process the other two AIM members were tried and found not guilty on the grounds of self defense. So Peltier’s decision to fight the extradition ended up back firing, because he probably could got off with the other two AIM members on self defense. Instead he was extradited back to the U.S. and was tried in his own trial and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences in April 1977. My opinion on the Peltier case is that it is similar to any other
