It's not a death penalty case, and I only became familliar with it this morning, but it seems like a good case to debate on whether or not the man is being held wrongly.

http://www.freepeltier.org/peltier_faq.htm

I don't know much about it other than what I've read this morning, but what I have seen isn't very pretty.

http://www.freepeltier.org/peltier_faq.htm
I've taken select excerts from that page
(7) As noted by Judge Heaney of the Court of Appeals of the Eighth Circuit, in his 1991 letter to Senator Inouye, "The United States government overreacted at Wounded Knee. Instead of carefully considering the legitimate grievances of the Native Americans, the response was essentially a military one which culminated in the deadly firefight on June 26, 1975 .... The United States government must share responsibility with the Native Americans for the ... firefight ... the government's role can properly be considered a mitigating cir stance. Judge Heaney, in this letter, (attached hereto), recommended clemency/commutation of sentence for Mr. Peltier as part of the healing process.

(8) Mr. Leonard Peltier was one of several high level AIM leaders present during the shoot out. Murder charges were brought against him, as well as his two friends and colleagues, Dino Butler and Bob Robideau, who had been present throughout the incident. Butler and Robideau stood trial separately from Leonard Peltier, who had fled to Canada, convinced he would never receive a fair trial in the United States. At the trial of Butler and Robideau a key prosecution witness, Mr. Draper, admitted that he had been threatened by the FBI and as a result had changed his testimony upon the agents' instructions, so as to support the government's position . The jury found both men not guilty. They found that there was no evidence to link the defendants to the fatal shots. Moreover, the exchange of gun fire from a distance was deemed to have cons uted an act of self defense.

9) Mr. Leonard Peltier was extradited from Canada on the basis of an affidavit signed by a Myrtle Poor Bear, a local Native American woman known to have serious mental problems. She claimed to have been Mr. Peltier's girl friend at the time, and to have been present during the shoot out, and to have witnessed the murders. In fact she did not know Mr. Peltier, nor was she present at the time of the shooting. She later confessed she had given the false statement after being pressured and terrorized by FBI agents, one of whom had also been involved in the falsification of Mr. Moves Camp's testimony earlier. Myrtle Poor Bear sought to testify in this regard at Leonard Peltier's trial. The judge barred her testimony on the grounds of mental incompetence. Nothing was done with regards to the illegal extradition. (Myrtle Poor Bear had also been forced to sign a similar affidavit against yet another local Native American named Marshall. Again she claimed to have been his girl friend, and linked him to a separate murder. This too she recanted. )

(10) No known witnesses exist as to the actual shooting of the FBI agents Coler and Williams. Three adolescents gave inconclusive and vague testimonies, contradicting their own earlier statements as well as each other. All three witnesses admitted they had been seriously threatened and intimidated by FBI agents.

(11) Critical ballistic information reflecting Mr. Peltier's innocence was withheld from the defense team, making a fair trial impossible. Specifically, at the trial, the FBI ballistic expert, Evan Hodge, testified that he had been unable to perform the best test, a firing pin test, on certain casings found near the agents' car, because the rifle in question had been damaged in a fire. Instead, he stated that he had conducted an extractor mark test, and found the casing and weapon to match.

Years later, do ents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act showed that in October 1975 a firing pin ballistic test had indeed been performed on the rifle and that the results were clearly negative. In short, the fatal bullet did not come from Leonard Peltier's weapon. The jury never heard about any of these crucial issues.

(14) There was no witness testimony that Leonard Peltier actually shot the two FBI agents. There is no witness testimony that placed Mr. Peltier near the crime scene before the murders occurred. Those witnesses placing Peltier, Robideau and Butler near the crime scene after the killing were coerced and intimidated by the FBI. There is no forensic evidence as to the exact type of rifle used to commit the murders. Several different weapons present in the area during the shoot out could have caused the fatal injuries. There was more than one AR-15 in the area at the time of the shoot out. The AR-15 rifle claimed to be Mr. Peltier's was found to be incompatible with the bullet casing near the agents' car. Although other bullets were fired at the crime scene, no other casings or evidence about them were offered by the Prosecutor's office. In short there is no reasonable evidence that Mr. Peltier committed the murders. Instead there is very strong evidence of FBI misconduct.

(16) At the Peltier trial the Prosecutor claimed in summation that...."we proved that he went down to the bodies and executed those two young men at point blank range...". At the appellate hearing, the government attorney conceded "We had a murder, we had numerous shooters, we do not know who specifically fired what killing shots...we do not know, quote unquote, who shot the agents."
And I'm going to put this one seperate, for somewhat obvious reasons

(22) Disturbingly, the FBI has also been implicated in similar instances of grave misconduct in parallel cases. By way of example, Mr. Geronimo Pratt has only recently been released from prison after serving some 27 years for a crime he did not commit. It has been established that key evidence against him was falsified by the FBI. Mr. Pratt was a leader in the Black Panther party. It is now a matter of public record that the FBI COINTELPRO program considered such minority organizations to cons ute a threat to domestic security, and routinely engaged in improper, unethical, and sometimes unlawful actions against them. We need only remember the harrasment of Dr. Martin Luther King for an example.