AIM slaying hearing for Canadian man delayed

By Carson Walker, Associated Press Writer | Friday, January 05, 2007

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SIOUX FALLS -- A Canadian man charged with killing American Indian Movement activist Anna Mae Pictou Aquash earned at least a few more months of freedom by getting a judge to delay his latest hearing.

John Graham is on house arrest in Vancouver, British Columbia, and fighting extradition to South Dakota to stand trial for the 1975 slaying on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

At a court hearing this week, a judge with the British Columbia Court of Appeal granted a request from Graham's lawyer to postpone a hearing on his appeal until May 17. It had been scheduled for Jan. 29.

However, the judge did require Graham's lawyer to file paperwork by Feb. 28 outlining why he wants a judicial review of an earlier decision by a judge who ordered him to be committed for extradition.

If Graham's lawyer doesn't file that factum -- the U.S. equivalent of a written brief -- by the deadline, Graham must turn himself the next day and his bail would be revoked, said Lyse Cantin, spokeswoman for Department of Justice in Vancouver.

After that May hearing, a judge will decide whether the court's decision to extradite Graham will stand, though he could then appeal to the full Canadian Supreme Court, she said.

Another man charged with Aquash's killing, Fritz Arlo Looking Cloud, is serving a mandatory life prison sentence for a 2004 conviction in Rapid City of first-degree murder committed in the perpetration of a kidnapping.

A three-member federal appeals court has since upheld the conviction and denied his request for a rehearing.

Aquash's slaying on the reservation came during a period of violence on the reservation involving AIM activists, tribal members who supported the Dick Wilson administration and federal officers. She was among the Indians who occupied the village of Wounded Knee for 71 days in 1973.

Prosecutors said AIM leaders ordered Aquash's killing late in 1975 because they suspected she was a government informant. AIM leaders denied the accusation and blamed the government for her death.