U.S. Attorney's Office in South Dakota taken to task over investigation
Case stems from theft of documents

Sam Lewin 12/28/2004
http://www.nativetimes.com/index.asp?action=displayarticle&article_id=5724

An attorney who represented the Oglala Sioux Tribe in a Grand Jury probe says an official with the US Attorney's office in Rapid City failed to follow up on the theft of documents, a loss that essentially destroyed the tribe's argument.

Part of the case involved claims against corporations that build homes on the reservation, dwellings that contain a disproportionately high level of mold. The head of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Housing Authority says that of the 1,700 housing units on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, 73 percent have been found to contain mold, which can lead to sinus and respiratory infections.

Charles Yow, representing the tribe and also the Executive Director of an Indian-advocacy group called the Native American Heritage Initiative, believed he had a strong case until one day in late September. That's when he discovered his law office in Pine Ridge had been burglarized, and a vast majority of relevant documents stolen.

"The case is dead now," Yow told the Native American Times.

Yow said he reported the case to the US Attorney's Office and was assigned Assistant US Attorney Robert Mandel.

Since then, Yow charges, there has been no progress on the case.

"I think Bob Mandel is a buffoon," Yow declared.

Yow said that he spoke with South Dakota US Attorney Jim McMahon, Mandel's boss, about the case and that McMahon assured him progress was being made.

"[McMahon] said that he had talked to Bob Mandel who told him that he was looking into it. I said, 'Jim, when I talked to Bob he said he hadn't done anything with it,'" Yow said. "Nobody has interviewed a single person."

Mandel is out of the office this week and could not be reached for a response.

Adding fuel to the situation is the relationship that already exists between Pine Ridge residents and the feds, one marked by a distrust that has only been exacerbated by the controversial case of Leonard Peltier, the American Indian Movement activist imprisoned for the murder of two federal agents. Allegations of racial profiling have also been leveled against South Dakota law enforcement.

Yow, while stressing that he believes McMahon is a "good guy", is using the Native American Heritage Initiative to publicly call for an investigation of the US Attorney's Office in South Dakota.

"Native Americans are subjected to ferocious prosecution for the most minor of offenses, while crimes against Native Americans are routinely ignored," the organization states in a news release. "In South Dakota a Native American accused of any offense is prosecuted for two offense, the primary offense is being a Native American. When Native Americans seek justice as victims of crime, the offenses against them are often ignored because the US Attorney's office in Rapid City is too busy prosecuting Native Americans for their race and ethnicity to bother prosecuting criminals for their criminality."

"I'm just sick of it," Yow, a Confederated Western Cherokee, said. "The people on Pine Ridge deserve more than lip service from those whose only goal is to put Indian people in prison.:"