(Jewish group) Maine posthumously pardons a Jewish attorney who fought for Native Americans

[Behind the Aegis]

Maine posthumously pardons a Jewish attorney for Native Americans who was framed by state’s law enforcement

Maine’s governor posthumously pardoned Donald Gellers, an attorney whose legal victories exposed the state’s abuses of the Passamaquoddy tribe and who state authorities framed as part of a conspiracy.

“For his tireless efforts to help others the whole of his life — both for his eight years in Maine and the 35 years since his conviction — I pardon Mr. Gellers,” Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, said at an emotional ceremony Jan. 7 at the Maine statehouse in Augusta, where she was surrounded by members of the tribe. “While this pardon cannot undo the many adverse consequences that this conviction had upon Mr. Gellers’ life, it can bestow formal forgiveness for his violation of law and remove the stigma of that conviction.”

The Portland Press Herald in 2014 exposed the conspiracy that targeted Gellers, who was Jewish, just before he died of cancer. Gellers, from New York, had moved to Maine and became the Passamaquoddy’s lawyer, exposing police abuses and massive looting of an 18th-century trust fund for the tribe. His efforts eventually led to land claim settlements in 1980.

Those were spearheaded, however, by a former intern — Gellers had left the state in 1971 after three years of fighting a marijuana possession charge that state authorities had trumped up because of his advocacy for the Passamaquoddy. Gellers moved to Israel, where he changed his name to Tuvia Ben-Shmuel-Yosef and was wounded while fighting in the 1973 Yom Kippur war. He was admitted to the Israeli bar, which he was upfront with about his Maine conviction. The Israeli bar described the conviction against him as a “catalog of horrors.”

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[JudyM]

1. Sounds like he was a real mensch and more. We need more like him in the world.