Indictment of Canadian in decades-old Aquash slaying dismissed

Friday, October 3, 2008 - CBC News
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/10/03/graham-trial.html

John Graham, a onetime member of the activist American Indian Movement group, was accused of killing fellow AIM member Annie Mae Pictou-Aquash of Pictou, N.S., at the Pine Ridge Indian reservation around Dec. 12, 1975. Her body was found the following February.

Graham, a Southern Tsimshian, has pleaded not guilty to the first-degree murder of Aquash, a Mi'kmaq.

In addition to Graham, two other AIM members, Arlo Looking Cloud and Richard Marshall, were also charged in Aquash's death. Looking Cloud was convicted of murder in 2004, and Marshall is awaiting trial.

Although Monday's scheduled trial in Rapid City, S.D., is now off, officials said prosecutors can seek another indictment against Graham.

In earlier proceedings before Judge Lawrence Piersol in Sioux Falls, Graham's lawyer argued that a U.S. court had no jurisdiction in the case, since neither Graham nor Aquash belonged to an American Indian tribe, and because both were Canadians.

The prosecution has argued the case falls within the U.S. government's jurisdiction because both Graham and Aquash were affiliated with the Olgala Lakota Sioux tribe as AIM members.

Prosecuters have said that Pictou-Aquash had married an enrolled Lakota member in a traditional ceremony.

In addition, they have said Graham was complicit with Looking Cloud, who was convicted of first-degree murder in 2004 for his role in the slaying.

Looking Cloud serving life term

Witnesses at Looking Cloud's trial said he, Graham and another AIM member, Theda Clarke, drove Pictou-Aquash from Denver, and that Graham shot her in the Badlands as she begged for her life.

Prosecution witnesses at his trial have testified that Aquash was killed because AIM leaders thought she was a government informant.

AIM leaders have denied any involvement in her death.

Looking Cloud is serving a mandatory life term for his role in the killing. Marshall pleaded not guilty to aiding and abetting first-degree murder after being indicted in August.

Clarke, who now lives in a nursing home in Nebraska, has not been charged.

While Graham has denied killing Pictou-Aquash, he has acknowledged he was in the car with her as she travelled from Denver.

With files from the Canadian Press