The government chose to try AIM leaders Dennis Banks and Russell Means first, in an eight-month 1974 trial at St. Paul that became a landmark exposure of federal misconduct. The defense, led by William Kunstler and Mark Lane with the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee, showed that the FBI had altered documents, presented perjured testimony, and placed an informant inside the defense camp.
On September 16, 1974, Judge Fred Nichol dismissed all charges outright, declaring that "the waters of justice have been polluted" by the prosecution's behavior. Of the 185 Wounded Knee indictments, the government ultimately won only a handful of minor convictions — a conviction rate so low that scholars concluded the point of the prosecutions had been to drain the movement's people, money, and momentum rather than to win cases.