While the controversy surrounding the AR-15 was still not even on the horizon, federal authorities had their hands full. Peltier, who had been arrested in Canada, was fighting extradition, and the government was trying to come up with some way to persuade the government of Canada to hand him over to U.S. authorities. In the end, the steps the government took turned out to be as controversial as every other aspect of the case.
But the government had more immediate concerns, as well. It had formally charged four men in the slayings of the two agents: Peltier, who was for the moment out of their reach, Robideau, Butler and Jimmy Eagle, the same Jimmy Eagle whom Coler and Williams were purportedly trying to find when the whole bloody confrontation at the Jumping Bull compound erupted. The FBI in its report mentions the case against Eagle only briefly, declaring that "the charges against Jimmy Eagle were dropped voluntarily by the government for lack of evidence."
The following summer, the government faced its first major setback when Butler and Robideau stood trial in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, after winning a motion for a change of venue.
If the government had expected the case against the two men to be a slam dunk, they were disappointed when the defense team introduced evidence suggesting that the FBI had a policy of attempting to disrupt and provoke organizations they saw as subversive, particularly minority organizations such as AIM. The defense also argued that Butler and Robideau, who were not present when the shooting started but joined later, were acting in what they believed was self-defense. Perhaps the most critical blow to the government's case came, according to Harbury, "when a key prosecution witnessadmitted that he had been threatened by the FBI and as a result had changed his testimony upon the agents' instructions, so as to support the government's position."
The all-white jury found the two men not guilty. And with that, the government turned its attention completely to Peltier.
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