by Carson Walker

Sioux Falls, South Dakota (AP/ICC)

The man convicted of killing American Indian Movement activist Annie Mae Pictou Aquash in 1975 has a new lawyer to handle his appeal.

Fritz Arlo Looking Cloud, 53, 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.

Looking Cloud is at a federal penitentiary in Pollock, La., according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

In October, he sent a handwritten note to his lawyer at the time, Terry Gilbert of Cleveland, asking that the attorney withdraw from the case, which Gilbert did in December.

This summer, Looking Cloud filed a handwritten habeas petition, the next step in his appeal, and asked for a new trial on three grounds: inadequate counsel, government misconduct and evidence at trial, according to the document.

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Piersol of Sioux Falls has now appointed defense lawyer Mike Butler of Sioux Falls to handle Looking Cloud’s habeas request, according to an order filed Sept. 5.

Butler has handled several other high-profile cases in South Dakota and currently represents Elijah Page, a 24-year-old death row inmate who has asked to end his appeals and die by lethal injection.

Another man charged in connection with Aquash’s murder, John Boy Patton-Graham, is free on bail in Vancouver, British Columbia, at least until Oct. 30, when another bail hearing is scheduled. He is fighting extradition to South Dakota to stand trial for a 1st degree murder indictment issued after a 2003 grand jury hearing.

Aquash’s slaying on the Pine Ridge Reservation came amid a series of bloody clashes between federal agents and AIM. She was among the protesters 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.