Closing arguments began on April 15, 1977.  In his summation for the prosecution, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lynn Crooks returned to what he called "perhaps the most important piece of evidence in this case" - a controversial .223 shell casing, supposedly ejected from the killer's rifle during the executions into the opened trunk of Coler's car.  The government's position was that this shell casing went unnoticed by whoever gathered up the incriminating shells after the killings  The government said it was the killers, suppressing evidence.  The defense said it was the government, eager to suggest the agents had scarcely fired any shots at all.  However the casing went unnoticed by the five FBI agents who scoured the death scene that same day, while the bodies lay there in the sun.  It is nowhere mentioned on the list of items in the July 1, 1975 302 report of Agent Cortland Cunningham, head of the FBI Firearms Division, who performed a systematic inspection of the car on June 30.  Nevertheless, Agent Cunningham had signed an affidavit used at Peltier's extradition hearings in Vancouver, claiming "I found one .223 cartridge case in the trunk which I took into my possession and placed it in an envelope marked 'Items recovered from trunk, Jack R. Coler automobile.' "  At Fargo, Cunningham acknowledged that he had not found this casing after all.  He said that Agent Lodge had found it, and had given it to him later.  Sure enough, the casing turns up on the last page of the notes Lodge said he took while inspecting this automobile on June 30.  Why notes were taken on this care alone (Lodge had also inspected William's car and the red-and-white van) was not explained.  Like Coward, Waring, and Cunningham before him, Agent Lodge felt obliged to adjust his testimony throughout, claiming at one point that everything in Coler's car had been turned over to Cunningham, and at another that "not everything was turned over to Cunningham."  During cross-examination, both agents were helped with their multiplying difficulties of recollection by helpful interjections from Judge Benson.  One example came when Attorney Lowe demanded to know whether Cunningham was aware that he had made a false statement under oath on that affidavit used in Canada, the agent said vaguely that "the significance of that paragraph at the time I signed the affidavit was not apparent to me."  Pressed for a simple yes or no, the witness was assisted by Benson, who decreed that the question had already been answered.

Even if the elusive casing was legitimate evidence, it had to be linked to a gun of the right caliber, and the gun the government came up with was the damaged AR-15 rifle taken from Robideau's exploded station wagon outside Wichita.  An FBI laboratory report of October 31, 1975 on the analysis of four weapons collected from the exploded station wagon on the Kansas Turnpike, made clear that none of the ammunition components recovered at Oglala could be associated with this gun.  Apparently the same was true of the AR-15 with the obliterated serial number recovered at Rosebud, and the third AR-15 found in the motor home in Oregon two months later.  Not until January 19, 1976 would ballistics expert Evan Hodge (who had signed the October 31 report) discover that the crucial casing could be linked to that Kansas Turnpike weapon after all - a theoretical conclusion only, as Hodge admitted, since unlike the Rosebud and Oregon weapons, this AR-15 with firing mechanisms and upper barrel partially melted and otherwise damaged by explosion and flames could not be test-fired.  In short, it was as difficult to disprove that .223 casing's connection to the damaged gun as it was to prove it.  Anyway, the government announced that the Wichita AR-15 had been the murder weapon, and the Hodge report was in good time for the affidavit he signed under oath to help secure Leonard Peltier's extradition.  Hodge accounted for the delay in his diagnosis by saying that although he had received that cartridge casing from Rapid City on July 24, 1975, he had not gotten around to testing it until late December - perhaps January - despite the ferocious intensity urgency of the ResMurs investigation.  Since this critical casing and another fired by a .308 were the only ones found near the bodies that could have come from the high-velocity weapon(s) that caused the deaths, this delay seems remarkable, to put it mildly.  Judge Benson then ruled that the defense, in its summation, was not to point out the strange timing of all these ballistics reports.  Presumably he felt that the suspicious attitude of the defense attorneys might confuse the jury, causing it to wonder if the Cunningham and Hodge affidavits had any validity at all.  Once again, the judge seemed to have usurped the jury's legal responsibility to decide the true facts of the case.

Both sides now agreed that Coler and Williams had been killed at point-blank range by one or more high-velocity weapons.  Among the weapons located by the FBI, those in this category included - in addition to Coler's own rifle, by no means an unlikely possibility - the Springfield bolt-action .30-06 deer rifle collected at the June Little cabin and two British Enfield .303s, one of them found down in the AIM camp and the other allegedly used by Norman Charles.  Casings from the latter weapon were found not only in the compound but near the tree line and at the Little Cabin.  In trying to focus the guilt on the AIM suspects, the government ballistics charts and maps seen by the jury ignored what Agent Hodge referred to as "a whole lot of ammunition components" that were never connected to any identified gun.  Since almost every weapon used by the agents and the AIM group had been identified, who was doing all the shooting?  And why - despite all the evidence of people fleeing the Jumping Bull area in the early afternoon in red pickups and gold autos, as well as on foot - were these shooters scarcely mentioned by both sides?  One may well suppose that the ResMurs defendants and their attorneys were anxious to avoid incriminating other Indians and that the prosecutionnhad good reasons for not doing so.  Even so, there was something unexplained, something disturbing in the avoidance of this whole area of investigation that was simply allowed to disintegrate, like the red pickup the prosecution was dismissing as a "phantom."

The massive and brain-numbing ballistics testimony in the trial transcript fails to establish Peltier's presence at Oglala, far less his identity as the killer.  Evidently prosecutor Crooks feared that the jury might perceive this, to judge from his emotional evocation of the bloody killings and his rabble-rousing denunciation of the defendant, neither of which had much to do with the hard evidence.

It is obvious that both of our two most important witnesss, Norman Brown and Mike Anderson, would have been defendants in trhis case along with Leonard Peltier and perhaps should have been.  I think it's obvous why they were not.  As I said, our best two eyewitnesses are dead: Jack Coler and Ron Williams.  They can never testify.

In short we needed witnesses.  There's no question about it.  The evidence for instance does not indicate that Mike Anderson or Norman Brown initiated these killings, or that they fired the fatal shots.  The evidence on the other hand indicates that Leonard Peltier was not only the leader of this group, he started the fight, he started the shootings, he executed these two human beings at point-blank range.

. . . There was one individual who was most responsible, and I think the evidence without any question proves and establishes beyond any doubt that that was the man seated over there (indicating) in the blue shirt and the vest, Leonard Peltier. . . .

Apparently Special Agent Williams was killed first.  He was struck in the face and hand by the bullet, as I have demonstrated, probably begging for his life, and he was shot.  The back of his head was blown off by a high-powered rifle.

Leonard Peltier then turned, as the evidence indicates, to Jack Colter lying on the ground helpless.  He shoots him in the top of the head.  Apparently feeling that he hadn't done a good enough job, he shoots him again through through the jaw, and his face explodes.  No shell even comes out, just explodes.  The whole bottom of his chin is blown out by the force of the concussion.  He dies.  Blood splattered against the side of the car.  Special Agent Adams arrived, a good friend of Ron Williams.  I think that was obvious from his testimony.  You will recall that he was very emotional, and I think understandably so, especially from looking at his involvement in this case.  He came under fire immediately. . . .

The tragic part, or perhaps the fortunate part, if he had gone a little farther, he probably would have seen Leonard Peltier standing over the bodies. . . . Had he gone any farther, we would have probably had three dead agents instead of two. . . . Everyone drew fire.  Passersby on the highway drew fire from this blood-crazed bunch.

Crooks spoke angrily of the "senseless, brutal, cowardly murders" of "two young, relatively handsome young men. . . killed in the performance of their duties" and of "human lives unique in God's creation."  Among his many misstatements of record, he told the jury that Mike Anderson had said that Peltier had gotten out of the red-and-white van and started shooting at the agents, while Anderson had said nothing of the kind.  "The agents are now dead," Crooks intoned, "the sniveling coward that shot them has fled."  Since the jurors were instructed not to take notes and were not to consult the more than five thousand pages of trial transcript, they could not retain pertinent details of the complex and lengthy arguments.  Since Judge Benson had also forbidden direct quotations from the transcripts during summations, it was difficult for the defense to show what Crooks was up to.  An experienced prosecutor who knew just what he was doing, Crooks took full advantage of this situation.  John Lowe's demand for a mistrial based on "grievous mistakes" in Crook's argument was dismissed by Benson, who paid no attention to Lowe's pleas that the court admonish the rampaging prosecutor or warn the jury that much of what this Assistant U.S. Attorney was telling them was simply untrue.