Two former American Indian Movement members newly indicted for the 1975 slaying of Annie Mae Aquash will stand trial at Rapid City in February - 33 years to the day after her body was found, a judge has ruled.

Richard Marshall and John Graham pleaded not guilty to charges they committed or aided and abetted the first-degree murder of Aquash, a fellow AIM member, on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Graham, a member of the Tsimshian Tribe in the Yukon, was to stand trial Oct. 6 but the judge threw out the indictment because grand jurors didn't previously consider whether Graham or Aquash, both Canadians, belonged to a federally recognized American Indian tribe.

When Graham was in British Columbia, he fought his return to South Dakota for more than four years. He was extradited in December after the Supreme Court of Canada refused to review his case.

Marshall, a Lakota from South Dakota, was indicted in August, five years after Graham and another Lakota AIM member originally from South Dakota, Arlo Looking Cloud, were initially charged.

Looking Cloud was convicted in 2004 for his role in Aquash's murder and sentenced to a mandatory life prison term.

Witnesses at his trial said he, Graham and another AIM member, Theda Clarke, drove Aquash from Denver in late 1975 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 but acknowledged being in the car from Denver.

In court documents, prosecutors accuse Marshall of providing the handgun used to kill Aquash.

The judge had given attorneys until Tuesday to indicate whether Graham and Marshall could be tried together starting Dec. 9 in Rapid City.

In their response, federal prosecutors Marty Jackley and Bob Mandel, who asked for an expedited trial, said it would work.

Graham's lawyer, John Murphy, wrote it would be too soon, mainly because the case might not be resolved before the Christmas holiday break.

Marshall's attorney, Dana Hanna, indicated December would be too soon because of the amount of evidence and other pending cases, and a federal magistrate already granted his request to delay the trial until Feb. 24 in Sioux Falls.

In his order denying the prosecution's request for an expedited trial, U.S. District Judge Lawrence Piersol scheduled Marshall and Graham to stand trial together on that day across the state in Rapid City, where both men are in jail.

"The court finds that the ends of justice served by taking such action outweigh the best interests of the public and the defendants in a speedy trial," Piersol wrote.

Aquash, a member of Mi'kmaq Tribe of Nova Scotia, was killed by a gunshot wound to the head near Wanblee. A rancher found her body Feb. 24, 1976, and she was buried weeks later as Jane Doe but was disinterred when tests determined it was her body.

She was reburied at an Oglala cemetery and her family exhumed the body in 2004 and returned it to Canada. She was laid to rest a third time at the Indian Brook reservation in Nova Scotia.

Some speculated Aquash was killed by AIM members because she knew some of them were government spies, while others said she was executed because she herself was an informant. Federal authorities have said Aquash was not an informant and they had nothing to do with her death.

Aquash was among the Indian militants who occupied the village of Wounded Knee in a 71-day standoff with federal authorities in 1973 that included exchanges of gunfire with agents who surrounded the village.