Wounded Knee and coming up with bail money. Bail bondsmen won't write bail for Indians, and AIM can't afford any of the bails set, which range from $125,00 for Russell Means, down to $1,000. Rumors of money coming from celebrity supporters are reported, but so far they are just rumors. AIM Will ask for change of venue for all trials. Kevin McKiernan, reports.
SPEAKER 1: Our principal problem at this moment is getting bail money for people who we haven't been able to bail out. We've got some very, very high bail set. I mean, I think if we were to total up all the bail we need to get everybody out now, it would come to close to $400,000.
SPEAKER 2: How much do you have in the account now?
SPEAKER 1: Zero, last I heard.
SPEAKER 2: What are these bails, Beverly?
SPEAKER 1: Well, they range all the way from $125,000 for Russell [? Means, ?] down to $1,000 on some of the people who are still in jail. But even the $1,000 we can't pay. We can't get bail bonds written. No bonds will write bail for the Indians we have here. We just are having a terrible time. All kinds of rumors keep going around that we're getting huge sums of money from Marlon Brando or Buffy Sainte-Marie or somebody like that. And so far they are just rumors. Also from church groups and so forth, we haven't seen dime one of any of those large amounts of money that we keep hearing are coming.
SPEAKER 2: Are you going to ask for a change of venue, and if so for what trials?
SPEAKER 1: We are going to ask for a change of venue on every single trial. There is no question that the hysterical state of opinion in South Dakota and that probably goes for North Dakota and the neighboring states as well, is extremely prejudicial to any action on our clients. And as far as we're concerned, we don't want to see one trial held here on any of them.
SPEAKER 2: Where would you like the venue to be placed?
SPEAKER 1: Well, we haven't quite decided that, but we'd have to be sufficiently far away so that the atmosphere here in South Dakota hasn't polluted the minds of prospective jurors.
SPEAKER 2: Assuming the defendants are bonded out, when do you anticipate the trials will take place?
SPEAKER 1: There's really no way of knowing that. Because of our shortage of personnel and so forth, we have been so occupied with the day to day handling of the myriad of problems that arise each day that we haven't got anywhere near doing the long range work in terms of trials. I do know it will probably be quite a while away. We have thousands of pretrial motions to make, including the one on change of venue, and many others. And until those things are done, there's no way of saying when the trial will be.
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