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U.S. Fights Dismissal Bid in AIM Slaying

By Carson Walker of the Associated Press

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — The U.S. government has jurisdiction and can prosecute John Graham for the 1975 slaying of Annie Mae Aquash, even though both hail from Canadian tribes, federal prosecutors argued in response to a defense motion to dismiss the case.

Graham, a Southern Tsimshian from the Yukon, fought his return to South Dakota under house arrest in Vancouver, British Columbia, but was extradited in December following the refusal by the Supreme Court of Canada to review his case.

Aquash was a member of the Mi'kmaq Tribe. Her family exhumed her remains from an Oglala grave in 2004 and reburied them in her native Nova Scotia.

Graham is scheduled to stand trial starting Monday in Rapid City on a charge he shot Aquash, a fellow American Indian Movement member, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Defendant one of three charged

He's one of three AIM members indicted for Aquash's slaying. Arlo Looking Cloud was convicted in 2004 and sentenced to a mandatory life prison term for his role. Richard Marshall has pleaded not guilty to aiding and abetting.

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

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

Graham has denied killing Aquash, though he acknowledged being in the car with her from Denver.

Prosecution press ties to Oglala Lakota Sioux

U.S. Attorney Marty Jackley and Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Mandel filed their response Tuesday to a request from Graham's lawyer, John Murphy, to dismiss the case on grounds U.S. courts don't have jurisdiction because the accused and victim were Canadians.

Graham and Aquash are of North American Indian descent, both were affiliated with the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe as AIM members, both took part in Lakota spiritual ceremonies, Graham held himself up as Clarke's nephew and an enrolled Lakota member and Aquash was married in a traditional ceremony, they wrote.

And "because Defendant Graham aided and abetted an Indian (Looking Cloud, Clarke and Marshall) in the commission of the murder of Anna Mae Aquash, this Court has jurisdiction," Jackley and Mandel argued.

Prosecutors have said some of the AIM leaders ordered Aquash's killing late in 1975 because they suspected she was a government informant. Those leaders have denied the accusation and blamed the government for her death. Federal authorities also denied any involvement.

Carson Walker is an Associated Press staff writer.