I certainly am biased on this question. I have worked on researching several matters for AIM, including a non-related case involving a homocide for Peltier's attorney Bruce Ellison.
Concerning support for Peltier v. working within the system, the premise is flawed by the comfort of class and racial privilege. The right to armed self-defense is very different from the call for armed struggle. Armed self-defense is a reality for many people of color in the U.S. This is not some silly White guilt claim, but a fact that I have observed working on police misconduct cases and studying White supremacist terrorism.
When people surround your house and start shooting through the windows, it is both practical and legal to fire back if the people do not identify themselves as law enforcement. Sometimes it is legally justified to return fire against law enforcement officers who are acting outside their authority (although I do not suggest this is a good idea in general).
People who are poor and not White face this type of situation far more often than people who are middle class and White. As a founding co-editor of Police Misconduct and Civil Rights Law Report I can say with certainty that in picking juries for police abuse cases, lawyers suing the police know that people of color are more likely to be open-minded about considering that the police acted wrongly because many of them have direct experience of police misconduct including deadly force. This comes out in interviews by jury specialists.
The argument that one should not support a pardon for Peltier (absent any real knowledge of the case!) because Peltier was engaged in a deadly shoot-out fails to take these concepts into consideration. Any violence in this framework precludes support. This fails to understand the nature of state repression and the related nature of class and race bias.
I wear a ring made by Bob Robideau, one of the persons with Peltier during the shoot out with the FBI agents. I do not wear it because I support shooting FBI agents. I think their deaths were a tragedy. I wear it as a reminder that sometimes people (especially people pf color and poor people) find themselves in situations where self defense--including armed self defense--is justified; and that I should step outside my class and race and mentally put myself in their circumstance before rushing to judgement.
Pardon my brief interlude with seriousness. I will return to my typical glibness in another post. Meanwhile I will continue to work to free Leonard Peltier.
-Chip Berlet