RAPID CITY, South Dakota (AP) – The prosecution rested its case Dec. 7 in the trial of a Canadian man accused of shooting an American Indian Movement activist in late 1975 and leaving her to die, after two federal agents testified that the suspect became nervous while discussing the crime.
Prosecutors allege John Graham, 55, shot Annie Mae Aquash and left her to die on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge reservation in 1975, in an incident that has become synonymous with AIM and its 1970s-era battles with federal agents. Graham is charged with first- and second-degree murder and could go to prison for life if convicted.
Prosecutors said Aquash was kidnapped from Denver by three AIM supporters and eventually taken to Pine Ridge because the group’s leaders thought she was a government spy.
One prosecution witness, Troy Lynn Yellow Wood, testified Dec. 2 that AIM members showed up at her Denver home where Aquash was staying in November 1975. Yellow Wood said Aquash told her she was afraid the activists thought she was an informant.
“‘If they take me from here, you will never see me alive again,”’ Yellow Wood said Aquash told her.
Under cross examination, defense attorney John Murphy suggested that Yellow Wood’s testimony was inconsistent with statements she previously made.
Former AIM activist George Palfy testified that he spoke to Aquash the night she left Denver, after Yellow Wood asked him to come over, and “she didn’t seem concerned” about rumors she was an informant.
Earlier Dec. 2, Angie Janis testified about receiving a phone call about Aquash from AIM supporter Thelma Rios in November 1975. Janis, who said she was Graham’s girlfriend at the time, testified that she was told “something to the effect that Annie Mae needed to be brought back to Rapid City. She was an informant.” Janis said she passed along the message but didn’t remember whom she told.
That was the same day a group of people gathered at Yellow Wood’s home, including Graham, Arlo Looking Cloud and Theda Clark. The three took Aquash from the home with her hands tied, Janis testified.
Palfy, during his testimony, said he saw Clark and Graham, but not Looking Cloud, walking with Aquash to Clark’s red Ford Pinto.
Janis appeared uncomfortable during cross-examination when Murphy brought up conflicting statements she made to law enforcement and in other court proceedings. The defense attorney said Janis had said previously that Aquash may have been tied to a board or that she couldn’t remember if Looking Cloud had been present.
Several times, Janis replied “I don’t recall.”
Also Dec. 2, South Dakota Judge John Delaney barred any mention to jurors of a key sentence in the first autopsy report for Aquash that suggests she may have had sex shortly before her death. Prosecutors have alleged Graham raped Aquash during her kidnapping.
Darlene “Kamook” Ecoffey testified Dec. 3 that an AIM activist later convicted of killing two FBI agents made an “incriminating” statement in front of her Aquash, who was later shot and killed.
Ecoffey, the former common-law wife of AIM leader Dennis Banks, was forbidden by Circuit Court Judge John Delaney from telling jurors exactly what she alleges group member Leonard Peltier told her six months before Aquash was killed. The judge deemed it hearsay.
But under questioning from prosecutors, she was allowed to say that Peltier made an “incriminating” statement.
At the 2004 trial of Arlo Looking Cloud, Ecoffey, an alleged co-conspirator who was convicted of taking part in Aquash’s slaying, testified that Peltier told her and Aquash that he killed two FBI agents during a June 1975 shootout at a Pine Ridge ranch.
“He said the (expletive) was begging for his life, but I shot him anyway,” Ecoffey testified then.
Peltier was convicted of shooting the agents in 1977 and is serving a life sentence.
Ecoffey also wasn’t allowed to tell jurors Dec. 3 about an alleged incident at a national AIM convention a few weeks before the shootout with the FBI agents. In 2004, Ecoffey testified that she was told Peltier held a gun to Aquash’s head and asked her if she was a government informant.
On Dec. 3, Ecoffey only said Aquash appeared nervous and upset in discussing what happened at the convention.
Prosecutors allege that Graham, Looking Cloud and Theda Clark killed Aquash because AIM leaders believed she was a government spy, which authorities have denied.
Also testifying Dec. 3 was Cleo Gates, the ex-wife of Richard Marshall, a man once accused of providing the .32-caliber pistol used to kill Aquash. Marshall was found not guilty earlier this year and is expected to testify Nov. 29.
Gates said Aquash sat inside their Pine Ridge home in late 1975 while Graham, Looking Cloud, Clark and Marshall met inside a bedroom, where prosecutors allege Marshall passed along a gun.
Gates testified that she didn’t see a gun and didn’t believe Marshall kept any weapons inside the house.
Candy Hamilton, a legal defense worker at the time of the incident, testified that she heard AIM supporters talking to Aquash inside a Rapid City building, before prosecutors believe she was taken toward Pine Ridge. But Hamilton dismissed rumors of Peltier threatening Aquash as “gossip,” and when prosecutor Rod Oswald asked her if she thought an FBI agent could have killed Aquash, she replied the agent “didn’t pull the trigger, but I think he could make it happen.”
Aquash, a member of the Mi’kmaq tribe of Nova Scotia, was 30 when she died. Her death came about six months after two FBI agents were gunned down in a shootout with AIM members, and two years after she participated in AIM’s 71-day occupation of the South Dakota reservation town of Wounded Knee.
AIM was founded in the late 1960s to protest the U.S. government’s treatment of Indians and demand the government honor its treaties with Indian tribes. It gained national attention in 1972 when it took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, but has since faded from public view.