Denver ? A federal appeals court refused to grant a parole hearing Tuesday to American Indian advocate Leonard Peltier in the 1975 slayings of two FBI agents on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Peltier, 59, is serving two life sentences for the slayings plus seven years for a 1979 prison escape. His attorneys argued the U.S. Parole Commission has denied Peltier a hearing on the unproven claim that he ambushed the two FBI agents before gunning them down.

Peltier will have been in prison twice as long as required by federal guidelines if no hearing takes place until 2008 as decreed by the Parole Commission, his attorney, Barry Bachrach, had argued.

Bachrach said Tuesday he and Peltier were debating how to respond to the ruling, handed down by a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Their options include asking the full appeals court to consider the issue and taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“This is a continuing embarrassment to the judicial system,” Bachrach said Tuesday. “Justice is just not being served here for whatever reason.”

Vernon Bellecourt, director of the American Indian Movement’s Council on International Affairs, said federal officials were trying to make an example of Peltier.

“He’s done more than 10 years over the time that he was eligible for parole,” he said.

A federal court in Kansas, where Peltier is imprisoned in Leavenworth, had turned down his request for a parole hearing. The three-judge panel of the 10th Circuit upheld the ruling.

U.S. Atty. Eric Melgren, of Wichita, Kan., had argued the Parole Commission made clear that Peltier should not be paroled even if he was not the shooter.

The commission based its finding on the exhaustive court record, which includes numerous unsuccessful appeals of Peltier’s conviction and sentence, Melgren has said.

“The court’s decision today confirms that Mr. Peltier has consistently received due process and fair treatment throughout his many hearings and appeals,” Melgren said Tuesday.

The 10th Circuit said it couldn’t weigh the evidence that the Parole Commission used, but only whether the commission’s decision was rational. The court concluded it was.