Attorneys debate role of handgun in Aquash case
By Heidi Bell Gease, Rapid City Journal staff | Monday, March 23, 2009
The defense attorney for a man charged in the 1975 murder of an American Indian Movement activist says jurors should not hear about his client’s previous shooting death conviction.
Richard “Dickie” Marshall, 57, and John Graham, 52, are scheduled to go on trial May 12 in U.S. District Court in connection with the fatal shooting of Annie Mae Aquash, whose body was found on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in February 1976.
Federal prosecutors have said they plan to introduce trial evidence regarding Marshall’s killing of Martin Montileaux on March 1, 1975, in a Scenic bar. Prosecutors said the Montileaux and Aquash cases are related because Marshall had the opportunity to provide the .32-caliber revolver that was confiscated after the Montileaux killing for the shooting of Aquash in December 1975.
Prosecutors say that revolver was released from police custody June 1, 1975.
According to Dana Hanna, Marshall’s attorney, it could not have been the same handgun.
“It could not have been the gun that was used to kill Aquash and which was then buried in December 1975 because state prosecutors produced it in the courtroom and offered it as an exhibit in the trial on April 2, 1976,” Hanna wrote. He said the revolver remained in police custody as evidence from the time it was seized until Marshall’s trial ended.
Hanna asked that U.S. District Judge Lawrence Piersol direct prosecutors not to offer or refer to the Montileaux evidence at trial.
Meanwhile, federal prosecutors have asked the judge to deny Hanna’s request to dismiss the case against Marshall for denial of due process.
Hanna said the government used one crime theory to convict Arlo Looking Cloud of Aquash’s death and is now using another theory to try to convict Marshall. Hanna said previous testimony was that Looking Cloud had provided the murder weapon to Graham, who then shot Aquash in the head. Prosecutors have accused Marshall of providing the murder weapon.
But prosecutors responded last week that Hanna was trying to create a “factual discrepancy” by mixing conduct at Marshall’s home with conduct at the murder scene.
“At his residence, Defendant Marshall provided aid to the criminal venture, including the revolver, shells and consultation,” the response reads. “Thereafter, other aiders and abettors, namely co-Defendant Graham and co-participants Arlo Looking Cloud and Theda Clarke, continued the criminal venture at the bluff where Aquash was murdered.”
Looking Cloud was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Marshall and Graham face the same sentence if convicted.
