Biography
American Indian Movement (AIM) activist framed alongside Richard Mohawk in the 1974 murder of taxi driver George Aird at the Camp 13 AIM encampment near Ventura, California. Held in Los Angeles County Jail for roughly four years before the pair were acquitted in 1978 after a long trial that exposed the role of informants and infiltrators in AIM. Documented in PFOC Breakthrough magazine.
Movement reporting during the pretrial years (Revolutionary Cause, March 1977) described the two men held in solitary confinement in separate prisons and frequently beaten by guards: Skyhorse was beaten, stripped, and thrown shackled into a punishment cell with an inch of water on the floor, and both men were forcibly given "prison pacifier" drugs they later had to kick. In court they were "subdued" — beaten, choked and dragged out — when they tried to speak for themselves. The three original suspects found at the scene had been granted immunity as prosecution witnesses, and a jail witness reported one of them saying she would testify as wanted in order to get her immunity.
Amnesty International monitored the case throughout: Chilean lawyer Dr. Eugenio Velasco observed the trial on the organization's behalf, and in July and October 1977 Amnesty wrote to Governor Jerry Brown, Senators Cranston and Hayakawa, and the Los Angeles County Jail warden over allegations that the two prisoners were denied adequate medical treatment and ill-treated in the Ventura and Los Angeles county jails (Amnesty International Report 1978).
