Ex-Official of Navajo Tribe Wins Court Leniency Plea

Former Navajo Tribal Chairman Peter MacDonald won a relatively lenient sentence Monday after being convicted in federal court on 16 fraud, extortion, bribery and racketeering charges.

MacDonald, already serving a jail term for tribal court corruption convictions, begged for leniency in an emotional statement to a federal judge.

“I don’t want to waste away somewhere away from my people,” MacDonald told U.S. District Judge Earl Carroll on Monday. “I want to go back to my family, my land and my people.”

His pleas seemed answered when the judge ordered MacDonald, 64, to serve multiple five-year terms. But, said Carroll, the sentences will run concurrently and to the seven-year term he is already serving, meaning MacDonald will spend no extra time in jail for the federal convictions.

Carroll also granted defense requests that MacDonald be allowed to serve his sentence at the tribal jail in Window Rock, Ariz., rather than in a federal prison.

The charges stem from a scheme to take over a computer company on the reservation, then have the tribe make loans to the firm, which in turn sent financial kickbacks to MacDonald.

About 60 of his supporters from the reservation filled the federal courtroom; many wept as they listened to MacDonald describe how his life has been ruined and the Navajo nation humiliated. “I am sorry and deeply remorseful that I brought this upon my family, my relatives, my people and the nation I helped build,” he said.

MacDonald was ousted from office in 1989 after allegations of impropriety surfaced. Last month, he was convicted of 26 more federal charges in a separate case relating to a deadly July, 1989, riot at the tribal office organized by his supporters. MacDonald is to be sentenced in that case Feb. 16.