Although the defense had prepared two weeks of testimony, about four fifths of it was disallowed, so that after fifteen days of prosecution evidence the defense found itself limited to just two and a half days in open court. By this time attorney Lowe, in the face of impending disaster, was already devoting his main effort to getting material on the court record that might later be used as the basis for an appeal. In his summation defense attorney Taikeff, having acknowledged that first-degree murder had been committed, contested the idea that it had been committed by Leonard Peltier. For that there was virtually no evidence:
Mr. Crooks said that it is unfortunate that Anderson and Draper and Brown couldn't be prosecuted, that they participated in these murders - but it was necessary to give up the privilege of prosecuting them in order to get the leader.Taikeff also returned to the enigma of the red pickup.Well, Norman Charles didn't testify for the government. How come he is not sitting over there with his lawyer? It's very interesting. Norman Charles doesn't testify for the government. We don't know why. . . . We have a lot of evidence of Norman Charles. . . . I also call to your attention that Joe Stuntz was found in an FBI jacket which came out of the car of one of the agents. . . . When did he put that jacket on? Was he one of the people with a .44 magnum who went down there? . . . That's the one identifiable bullet in one of the agents, a .44 magnum. And Joe Stuntz has the jacket on.
Why the great sensitivity about the red pickup? Did that red pickup carry away the people who killed the agent? Did that red pickup carry away people who were directly involved? They went out at 12:18. That is a very significant fact because it is within minutes, just a few minutes of the time by which it is fairly certain that both agents had died.Taikeff repeatedly returned to the contradictions in the testimony of Mike Anderson:If you recall, and it's perhaps a very subtle point, why did Mr. Sikma keep asking these witnesses questions which used the word "vehicle" in spite of the fact that they kept answering him with the word "pickup?" . . .
Anderson was on the stand. Anderson who was on the roof of Wanda Siers' residence, the tan and red residence, Mr. Hultman was questioning him. Mr. Hultman said "What if anything then happened?" Answer: "Well, I guess they seen the orange pickup going down that way way and they followed it." . . .
Next question by Mr. Hultman: "Now when you say orange pickup is that the red and white van?" What kind of a question is that? When someone says orange pickup they mean orange pickup, they don't mean red and white van. . . .
Why did Mr. Anderson refer to it as the orange pickup? How did he convert on the stand a red and white van into an orange pickup" . . . "The orange and white and red and white van that was going down the hill." So now it was both orange and red and white and it was a van all in a few seconds. The conversion was made right there in the courtroom. . .
Anderson, when shown a photograph of Jimmy Eagle, said, "Yes, he was there with his girlfriend, Wilma, who was cooking." So not only does Anderson by some magic process place Jimmy Eagle at Tent City, but he is there with a girlfriend by the name of Wilma and she is cooking the late morning meal. How come nobody mentioned Wilma? Norman Brown, Michael Anderson . . . Draper, nobody mentioned Wilma, the provider of the food. Strange, isn't it? And then again . . . if Anderson, when he was interviewed, was in a position to say who was in Tent City preparing breakfast, because that's where everybody was when the shooting broke out, then how could he be on Wanda Siers' roof unless he has the capacity to fly? He may have the capacity to lie but he doesn't have the capacity to fly. . . .In the end, it was Judge Benson's determination of what the jury should or should not see and hear that became the deciding factor in the trial. While permitting reference to Peltier's past "crimes" (for not even one of which had he been either tried or convicted), and permitting the unrestrained brandishing of gory pictures of the agents' corpses, "bullet-riddled" by this "blood crazed bunch," not to speak of several weeks of testimony that was mostly immaterial even when not perjured or coerced, Benson forbade the defense to cite the evidence and verdict in the case of Butler and Robideau, and ruled all reference to COINTELPRO and most references to FBI misconduct inadmissible. Due to this judge's apparently biased exercise of his discretion, the jury was never troubled by the strong evidence of fabrication in the many contradictory 302s, or by the manipulation of Myrtle Poor Bear, or by much other evidence tending to show that Leonard Peltier was being railroaded into prison. Denied evidence of the whole pattern of fabrications that had laid the foundation for this trial, the jury had no way of knowing that the evidence against Peltier was essentially identical to the evidence against the two men men already acquitted, and no way of sorting out the parade of prosecution witnesses, the hodgepodge of hollow circumstantial evidence, the charts and table load of dangerous weapons that were brandished by the prosecutors for fifteen days. What was clear was that two white men, frightened and outnumbered, had been brutally killed, and that this Indian and his associates had been caught with the victims' guns. This damning circumstance, reinforced by those awful red photographs, ensured the prosecution's victory in "United States versus Leonard Peltier."Can you explain except by saying there us something terribly wrong here? You are asked to do a very, very serious task. Either way, just to return a verdict in this case, is a monumental act. Can you do so with comfort and assurance? . . .
Adams, the first witness for the Government, testifies the official investigation revealed nothing to indicate that Eagle was present on 6-26. Then how does it happen that Eagle is spotted through a telescope at a half mile? How does it happen that as witness who testified here that he saw Leonard Peltier down by the cars with two others - Michael Anderson - says that Jimmy Eagle was in Tent City with a woman named Wilma? How do these things happen?