Yankton Sioux demand justice for tribal members
Published in Native Sun News in 2011. For more on topics like this, see my book, American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle....
Family of Yankton inmates demand judicial review. |
On July 20,
the Yankton Sioux Tribe passed a resolution requesting that the U.S. Attorney
General review a federal-court conviction of four tribal members on
childhood-sexual-abuse charges. “We believe that these four men are
innocent of all charges against them and that their trial was fatally tainted
by serious error,” reads the document, which suggests that the men be either freed
or retried.
The resolution will be delivered to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder at a meeting this week in Rapid City, South Dakota, and sent to his office. Accompanying it are letters from experts who point to judicial irregularities in the 1994 trial of brothers Jesse and Desmond Rouse and their cousins Russell Hubbeling and Garfield Feather. So far, the men have served 17 years of sentences that were as long as 30 years.
The supporting letters are from Robert Chatelle, executive director of
the National Center for Reason and Justice, which works to exonerate those
wrongfully convicted of harming children, and from two authorities on
children’s testimony: forensic psychologist Hollida Wakefield and Johns Hopkins
medical school professor Maggie Bruck, Ph.D.
Chatelle’s letter stressed civil-rights and due-process violations in the
trial, including racist remarks by “at least one member of the defense team,”
intimidation of defense witnesses, and evidence crucial to the defense that the
judge did not allow the jury to hear. Chatelle, Wakefield, and Bruck all noted
problems with the interviews of the men’s nieces and nephews — the alleged
victims — which appear to have contaminated the youngsters’ memories from the
very start of the proceedings.
“Results
of 50 or more studies [show] that when children are suggestively
interviewed about events that never occurred, they can come to make false
allegations,” Bruck wrote to Holder. The three experts’ opinions are
shared by prominent investigator Martin Yant, whose independent review of the
trial and evidence helped convince NCRJ to take up the men’s cases.
Concerns about coercive interviewing arose as early as 1996. In a majority
opinion for the men’s successful appeal — which the U.S. Attorneys’ Office then
got the same court to reverse — Judge Myron H. Bright noted that the alleged
victims, who were aged 4 to 7, were interviewed by intimidating teams of as
many as four adults, including an FBI agent and a BIA agent who identified
themselves as “like a policeman.” According to the judge, the questioners
showed the youngsters anatomical drawings of a penis; “helped” them remember
abuse; gave them group “therapy,” during which they encouraged the children to
talk about sex; and made it clear the kids wouldn’t go home unless they agreed
with their questioners about “the truth.”
“Sick” was Desmond Rouse’s assessment of the interviews: “FBI agent
William Van Roe and BIA agent Dan Hudspeth had our little relatives for months
[and] made them play in a dirty way with dolls with penises [and] draw dirty
pictures. Someone needs to find those drawings. Or did they get rid of them?”
What is known is that the FBI claims no one made audio- or videotapes of the
sessions, which Wakefield called “unusual.”
The children may never have fully understood what was happening.
According to Desmond Rouse and one of the alleged victims (now an adult), some
of the kids waved at their uncles when they saw them in the courtroom; while the
kids were being questioned over closed-circuit television in a separate room,
they got excited about seeing the four men “on TV.”
However, the youngsters do appear to have figured out that they had to
answer “yes” to the prosecutors’ yes-no questions if they wanted to return to
their mothers. Their families, in turn, were warned by the prosecution not to
cooperate with the defense if they wanted to get their children back, said
Roderica Rouse, who is Desmond and Jesse’s sister and the mother of an alleged
victim.
The tribe’s and experts’ documents in support of the men, along with a
grant application to the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community to help pay for a lawyer, came
together after a whirlwind trip to the reservation last week by Desmond’s
fiancée, Anna James (shown with Rouse). James traveled from Great Britain, where she lives and
works as an interpreter.
“I love the other guys like brothers and asked, ‘can I speak for all
of you to the tribe?’” said James. “They said, ‘yes!’”
When she arrived on the Yankton reservation, she found support among tribal
officials, as well as among the men’s relatives, with whom she had been
communicating. For many months, for example, James has spoken nearly daily by
phone with Roderica Rouse. The four men’s cousin James Weddell helped James present
her request to the tribal government.
These days, Desmond Rouse
and Anna James communicate constantly via email and see each other when they
can. They’re hoping the four men’s convictions will be resolved shortly but are
also trying to be realistic. “Whether it’s very soon or when Desmond’s sentence
is up in ten years, we’ll be together,” she said.
c. Stephanie Woodard; photos courtesy Anna James.
c. Stephanie Woodard; photos courtesy Anna James.