Monday, Mar. 01, 1993

Jail Time

Peter MacDonald's 14-year effort to build an independent Navajo Nation for America's largest Indian tribe was hobbled by repeated run-ins with the law. His latest setback: a 14 1/2-year sentence from a Phoenix federal judge for his role in a 1989 riot at the tribe's Window Rock, Arizona, headquarters, where two of his supporters were killed. MacDonald, 64, will serve the term concurrently with previous sentences: five years from a 1992 federal racketeering case and seven years from a 1990 case in which he was convicted by a tribal court of accepting kickbacks and bribes.