The search for justice for a Lakota Sioux man wrongfully charged with murder told here for the first time by the legendary trial lawyer for among many others Karen Silkwood and Randy Weaver.
Gerry Spence is legend among the trial bar and one of the greatest trial lawyers of our times. His civil practice and defense of those charged with crimes has gained him an international reputation for his high profile cases and record results. His trials have been the subject of books and television. He is an author of nineteen books as well as a television celebrity, poet, artist and photographer. He received the first Lifetime Achievement Award from the Consumer Attorneys of California. In 2009 he was inducted into the American Trial Lawyers Hall of Fame. In 2013 he received the Lifetime Achievement award presented by the American Association for Justice. He is the founder of the nonprofit Trial Lawyers College in Wyoming, is the founding member of The Spence Law Firm, LLC, and practices in Jackson Hole, Wyoming with his many business partners. Spence served as one of Collins Catch the Bear's lawyers on the Yellow Thunder case.
*"Renowned defense attorney and activist Spence casts a long look
backward at a haunting case.
"As a prosecutor,” said Spence’s
opposite in a trial four decades ago, “you do the best you can with
the witnesses you’ve got.” That trial concerned a murder charge
against a young Lakota man
named Collins Catch the Bear, who had been
raised with every disadvantage: alcoholic parents, foster families,
juvenile detention, low self-esteem, and a quickness to cry tears
of rage and act out, a tendency that sent him to a mental hospital,
where “a psychiatrist…concluded that he suffered from a ‘behavior
disorder of childhood with unsocialized aggressive reaction,
moderate to severe.’ ” Adds Spence, “in short, this
fourteen-year-old boy was pissed to the max.” The boy was a Lakota
who did not speak the language or know much of his people’s
history; when he came into the orbit of Russell Means and the
revived American Indian Movement of the early 1980s, he was eager
to join. Collins was soon swept up in trouble, accused of
killing a white man who had threatened him and several other Sioux.
The facts didn’t add up. As Spence writes of the victim, “his right
hand was completely covered with blood, but not a drop of blood was
on the pistol. Someone had put the pistol in the man’s
hand after he was dead.” Furthermore, the key witness for
the prosecution was “a professional liar,” but the case went
on. Collins was convicted and sentenced, though a
sympathetic judge lightened his sentence, an act of kindness that
did no good. The young man was soon in and out of jail for other
offenses and came to a bad end, in Spence’s view “a modern-day
martyr” whom life had dealt nothing but bad hands.
A fine work of true crime and a lesson in how justice can be poorly
served despite good intentions.
“A fine work of true crime and a lesson in how
justice can be poorly served despite good intentions.” —Kirkus
Reviews, starred review
"Spence (Court of Lies) relates the circumstances surrounding
the 1982 arrest and subsequent trial of Collins Catch the Bear, a
young Lakota Sioux accused of killing a white man in the Black
Hills. Before discussing his own involvement in Catch the Bear’s
defense, Spence describes the bleak childhood that Catch the
Bear—born to impoverished, alcoholic parents on the Standing Rock
Reservation—spent in foster care and boarding schools, a
peripatetic existence that led to struggles with alcohol, drugs,
and crime. Spence lays out the scanty evidence against the
defendant, the conflicting stories of the eyewitnesses, and the
political climate surrounding Catch the Bear’s involvement with
Russell Means’s controversial American Indian Movement (AIM). As
Spence takes readers through the defense team’s investigations, he
shares the thought processes that shaped his conviction of Catch
the Bear’s innocence, along with his suspicions of a deeper
conspiracy. ... thoughtfully portrays justice both
manipulated and denied in this sharp indictment of the treatment of
indigenous people." —Library Journal
"Trial lawyer Spence (Police State: How America’s Cops Get Away
with Murder) unveils in this sad, sobering account the horrific and
heartbreaking story of Collins Catch the Bear, a Lakota Sioux who
became Spence’s client after he was charged with the fatal shooting
of a white man in 1982 near the Yellow Thunder Camp outside Rapid
City, S.Dak. As Spence meticulously builds his case for Catch the
Bear’s innocence, he describes how law enforcement officers
manipulated witnesses by preying on their fears of the police,
prosecutors focused on their own political goals to the detriment
of justice, and activists tried to cover up the death and only
succeeded in fueling the flames surrounding the case. He also
addresses ingrained discrimination against and systematic
marginalization of Native Americans, noting, “In those days (and
perhaps today in some quarters of the state), Indians were viewed
with approximately the same affection as coyotes, rats, and other
vermin.” Spence, who has never lost a case, was ready to go to
trial and was certain he would win, but Catch the Bear fired him
and pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, second degree manslaughter,
with a maximum sentence of 10 years. Spence considers Catch the
Bear a martyr because he believed his client pleaded guilty to save
the encampment; had Catch the Bear been tried and acquitted, Spence
suggests, there would have been reprisals from the white community.
This frightening work makes clear the ways the justice system can
fail to protect the country’s most vulnerable citizens."
—Publishers Weekly
“In a story chock full of vengeance, treachery, racism, tragedy,
and despair, Gerry Spence recounts the torments endured by his
young client, Oglala Lakota Collins Catch the Bear, before, during,
and after his court room battles in 1982-1983. The trials occurred
near the end of a period of intense Indigenous activism spearheaded
by the American Indian Movement. Catch the Bear was unjustifiably
prosecuted for events that had taken place when he was living at
the Yellow Thunder Camp of Native activists in the Black Hills of
South Dakota, lands held as sacred by the Lakota and other Tribal
nations. Over those years, Spence witnessed, fought, and chronicled
the personal and institutional racism that continues to typify the
experience of Indigenous peoples living in the U.S. There are no
heroes in this intimate, unvarnished account, and Spence spares no
one, not even himself. He has thus managed to evoke the dark
and lonely struggle that will be all too familiar to Natives and is
critical reading for those non-Natives who seek to understand more
about Indigenous experiences and history.” —David Wilkins
(Lumbee), professor, University of Richmond
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