Dec 08, 2007 - 04:04:42 CST
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - The Vancouver, British Columbia, man accused of killing an American Indian Movement activist in 1975 will be extradited to the United States to stand trial.The Supreme Court of Canada on Thursday dismissed a request for an appeal filed by John Graham, a Yukon native also known as John Boy Patton, who is charged with murder for the slaying of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Denise Maloney Pictou of Halifax, Nova Scotia, one of Aquash's two daughters, said Graham's extradition fight over the last nearly four years has prevented closure for the family.
"I'm not in shock but I'm just overwhelmed," she said after learning of the decision. "We were sitting on edge hoping and praying that it would be news in our favor so we could move on."
Graham was taken into custody in June after a Vancouver judge denied his appeal of an order that he be sent to South Dakota to stand trial. The Supreme Court was his last hope of not being returned to the U.S. to stand trial.
Marty Jackley, U.S. attorney for South Dakota, said the U.S. marshal's office will return Graham to South Dakota soon.
"In the very near future. That's all I can tell you," he said.
A Canadian prosecutor handling the case on behalf of the United States said earlier that if the Supreme Court didn't hear the appeal, Graham would be extradited quickly.
Greg Delbigio, Graham's Vancouver lawyer, could not be reached immediately for comment.
Graham had been under house arrest since he was charged in December 2003 with first-degree murder in Aquash's death. Her body was found Feb. 24, 1976. The Nova Scotia native had been shot in the head.
Aquash's murder came amid a series of clashes in the mid-1970s between federal agents and members of the American Indian Movement. Aquash, a member of Mi'kmaq Tribe of Canada, was among Indian militants who occupied Wounded Knee for 71 days in 1973.
American 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.
The other man charged with killing Aquash, Fritz Arlo Looking Cloud, received a mandatory life sentence in 2004 after a federal jury in Rapid City convicted him of first-degree murder committed in the perpetration of a kidnapping. A federal appeals court upheld the conviction.
Witnesses at Looking Cloud's trial testified that Graham shot Aquash, whose family exhumed her body in 2004 from her Oglala grave and reburied it in Nova Scotia. Graham has said he's innocent.
A Canadian judge ruled in 2005 that Graham should be extradited and the Canadian minister of justice affirmed that decision last year.
"We're at 30 plus years now and it's such as travesty of justice," Maloney Pictou said of her mother's murder. "You can feel confident that her rights are being considered."
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