Judges covering up Pennington County ICWA violations

Pennington County's behavior has been called shocking.

Christina Rose, Native Sun News Associate Editor told readers at indianz:

According to Stephen Pevar, attorney for the ACLU, “What happened in the Pennington County Courts is something you would expect in a Third World Country.” Pevar has been an ACLU attorney for 36 years and said he has never seen such blatant violations in his career.

Daniel Simmons-Ritchie writes in the Rapid City Journal, itself a focus of racial controversy:

Between choked sobs and streaming tears, more than a dozen Native American families delivered testimony Wednesday in Rapid City about how their children were taken from them by South Dakota social workers.

With state officials sitting in the audience and not on the dais, former US Senator James Abourezk urged the federal government to sue the State of South Dakota.

Comes this from Brandon Ecoffey of Native Sun News:

In a suit that was filed by the Oglala Sioux Tribe, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, and the American Civil liberties union on behalf of tribal members in March of last year that alleges that the state of South Dakota and Pennington County specifically, has institutionalized the process of denying tribal members their constitutional right to due process, several judges in South Dakota have refused to comply with a court order to turnover copies of transcripts from hearings that allegedly detail this denial. The five Judges, all from the seventh circuit, refusing to comply with the motion are Judge Eklund, Judge Trimble, Judge Thorstensen, Judge Pfleifle, and Judge Mandel. [Brandon Ecoffey, South Dakota judges balk at ICWA court order]

Recall the resignation of Judge A.P. (Pete) Fuller in 2011:

Pennington County State’s Attorney Glenn Brenner, Rapid City Police Chief Steve Allender and then Pennington County Sheriff Don Holloway made the formal complaint in May that led to Fuller’s suspension and subsequent investigation by the Judicial Qualifications Commission, a seven-member body that includes 7th Circuit Court Judge Jeff Davis of Rapid City. The frustration in the State’s Attorney’s Office reached the boiling point when Judge Fuller called Rapid City police officers a “bunch of racists” while listening to an officer explain in a juvenile court hearing why he stopped a car driven by a Native American who was on probation. [Andrea Cook, Rapid City Journal]

One astute Journal respondent said it this way:

South Dakotans, your memories seem to be hazy. Fuller, a Democrat, is being asked to leave because he engaged in some relatively mildly inappropriate comments. However, when a Republican Governor does the same thing, while killing people on his own time (and then denying the right of the family to sue him by claiming he was on government time), and breaking the speeding laws even more than Kristi, then it seems to be okay. Fuller is being removed because he is a Democrat, period.

This interested party has direct knowledge of abuses visited upon families by employees of the state from 1994 to 2000 and is all too close to this story.

The plan to nearly triple the training airspace for the Air Force Base's Powder River Training Complex has received the support of the Pennington County Commission. The Butte County Commission expressed its concerns back in 2010. [Billings Gazette]