At first glance, the facts seemed straightforward.

In October 1991, after a long-running family feud, Douglas White, a Lakota medicine man from South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, was accused of sexually abusing his two grandsons. In January 1993, the 72-year-old White was sentenced to 292 months in federal prison with no hope of parole.

There was, however, more to his story. When two young video artists started delving into it nearly 20 years ago, they realized how much remained to be told. They embarked on a complex journey that produced their startling 2011 documentary Holy Man, the USA v. Douglas White, and in the process, uncovered dramatic new evidence that turned the government’s case against White inside out. The film is narrated by Martin Sheen.

Jennifer Jessum is the founder and director of Flying Limbs Inc. Productions. She served as director, producer, cinematographer and editor for Holy Man, while her husband, Simon Joseph, took on the roles of writer, producer and cinematographer. ...

Jessum says it was much later, when the duo had relocated to the West Coast, that they learned about the case against him. ...

“We requested to do on-camera interviews, but the Federal Bureau of Prisons told us it was a ‘security risk,’ ” says Joseph. “That pushed us to look toward the case, to see where we could do the most good.” He pauses. “We started seeing a lot of holes.”

The duo learned that after sexual assault allegations were made against White in October 1991, the tribal court on Pine Ridge fully investigated the case, brought it to trial and dismissed it for lack of evidence. Then, more than a year later, the federal government inexplicably reopened the case and charged White with the same crime.

Double jeopardy means being tried twice for the same offense, and is prohibited by the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But, Jessum and Joseph say, it’s all too common on reservations.

To make matters worse, White had no means to hire a lawyer and was defended by a court-appointed attorney. He was tried by an all-white jury at a federal court in Rapid City, South Dakota, 100 miles from his home, in a language he did not fully understand. He was convicted despite the fact that there was contradictory testimony and no physical evidence.

U.S. District Judge Richard H. Battey sentenced White to 25 years in prison.
According to Jessum and Joseph, White continued to pursue his work as a medicine man within the prison walls. “He didn’t understand why he was in there,” Jessum says. “He thought, I’m innocent. Let me out! It was a horrible place, but he was incredibly respected by the other inmates and the people who worked there. ...

According to Joseph, the team had interviewed Roy Helper Jr., one of the two grandsons who accused White of abuse, several times. Nothing much came of it, until one day in October 2007, “Roy called us and said, ‘I need to talk to you today,’ ” Joseph recalls. “His wife had just had a baby boy; it was a big moment for him. He explained that he’d been carrying this burden his entire life and was ready to let go.”

Helper met the film crew at a hotel in Rapid City, and he confessed on film that he had lied about the alleged abuse. He said that he and his brother, Lloyd, were under tremendous pressure from lawyers, judges and “people in suits,” and he said the experience was frightening. He also indicated that they were coaxed to say certain things. In return, they were told they would get money, toys, even a horse. [[They received none of those things.)

“We were just little, dumb, stupid Indian kids, being tossed around,” Helper says in Holy Man, his voice choked with emotion. “Eventually it’s going to come out. Like today.” ...

Next, viewers learn that White’s ex-wife, Evelyn, admitted that no abuse occurred, despite her accusations against her for former husband so many years ago; ... And the boys’ mother, Geraldine, who formally accused White in 1991, admits that years later, when she asked Lloyd [[the other boy) if the old allegations were true, he said they weren’t. ...

“After Roy confessed that he had never been abused, we realized that this was new evidence of Douglas’s actual innocence, because the only real evidence at the trial was the contradictory testimonial evidence of the two boys,” Joseph explains. “So I contacted [attorney] Terry Pechota, and he agreed to take the case on. ..

In response to the psychological evaluation and polygraph results [that the abuse never occurred], three members of the original jury recanted their guilty verdicts and signed affidavits. The petition was filed with the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in October 2008, and after its approval in March 2009, the case was sent to U.S. Magistrate Judge Veronica L. Duffy for her to make a recommendation to the Senior District Court judge, who had not yet been determined.

Duffy approved a petition for the case to be expedited, based on White’s failing health. And on July 31, 2009, she recommended an “immediate evidentiary hearing” to Judge Richard H. Battey—the same judge who had sentenced White to 25 years in prison.

In August, the U.S. Attorney’s office objected to the request for a new trial, insisting that White learned about Roy Helper Jr.’s confession in 2004, years before it actually took place [making the appeal untimely. A petition had been filed including signed statements from Louis Helper and his mother, but not Roy]. ...

“Gilbert never contacted Roy Helper at this time, nor did he ever obtain an affidavit from him,” Joseph explains. “When Douglas filed his petition, he made a reference to the enclosed ‘affidavits,’ in plural, suggesting that he had affidavits from both boys. But this was never part of the submitted court record, and the government knew it, but this little verbal slip was all they needed to argue that the one-year statute of limitations on disclosing new evidence had run out.
....
Joseph immediately contacted Roy Helper and White to have them clarify what had happened in notarized affidavits, stating that the confession had occurred for the first time in 2007. They submitted the affidavits to Judge Battey as evidence proving the U.S. Attorney’s claims were false. “We asked him to reconsider his ruling, but he ruled against Douglas again [on October 21, 2009],” Joseph says. ...

White’s legal team appealed Battey’s decision to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals and requested that the court remove him from the case. They also asked for White to be released while the government prepared for trial. ...

They ran out of time. Douglas White died in prison on November 24, 2009. According to Jessum and Joseph, the government has never explained why it prosecuted White a full year after tribal court dismissed his case—or why it insisted on denying White a new hearing in light of such significant new evidence.

“That’s what was most horrifying for me, as we kept gathering evidence of his innocence and of his wrongful conviction,” Jessum says. “We have more [evidence] than any court could ever ask for. This opens up a deeper darkness. You see how ugly the system is. They let an innocent man die in prison to protect the system.” ...

Despite that, Jessum and Joseph point to a larger message of hope. “The film is a testimonial to Douglas, his spirit and the Lakota spirit,” Jessum says. “The things indigenous people have gone through is so horrific, yet they maintain their spiritual connections, their humor.”...

Visit HolyManFilm.com. At press time, Flying Limbs Inc. Productions expected to have DVDs available for purchase this summer.

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