A Canadian man made his initial court appearance Friday in Rapid City on new charges he killed a fellow American Indian Movement member 32 years ago - hours after a judge dismissed the indictment against him.

John Graham was scheduled to stand trial Monday in Rapid City on a charge of first-degree murder for the 1975 shooting death of Annie Mae Aquash on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

The trial was canceled, but federal prosecutors filed the fresh criminal complaint within hours of the judge's ruling. They have 10 days to hold a preliminary hearing or bring a new indictment against Graham.

In the complaint, Graham is charged with three alternative counts of first-degree murder for committing and aiding and abetting others in the killing of Aquash on or about Dec. 12, 1975, near Wanblee, according to U.S. Attorney Marty Jackley.

The complaint alleges Graham and Aquash are both Indians. The charges carry a penalty of life in prison.

Graham appeared in magistrate court in Rapid City on the new charges. A detention hearing was set for Oct. 10. He is in Pennington County Jail.

Graham is from the Tsimshian tribe in the Yukon and for four years fought his return to South Dakota in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was extradited in December after the Supreme Court of Canada refused to review his case.

Aquash was a member of the Mi'kmaq Tribe. Her family had her remains exhumed from an Oglala grave in 2004 and reburied in her native Nova Scotia.

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Piersol filed his response Friday to a request from Graham's lawyer, John Murphy, that the indictment be dismissed on grounds the United States didn't have jurisdiction.

Graham and Aquash were Canadian citizens and members of Canadian tribes, but the indictment doesn't show that either is a member of a federally recognized American Indian tribe, which the law requires, he argued.

Jackley and Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Mandel argued at a hearing Thursday that the indictment was sufficient because the other man indicted and already convicted, Arlo Looking Cloud, does fit the definition of Indian.

Looking Cloud is an Oglala Lakota originally from Pine Ridge. The indictment would allow jurors to find that Graham aided and abetted Looking Cloud, the prosecutors argued.

Piersol rejected that.

"There is no authority for this proposition. The aiding and abetting statute is simply another means of convicting someone of the underlying substantive offense, which in this case is murder," he wrote.

"There is no dispute that the superseding indictment fails to set forth Graham's Indian status. An indictment must set forth the essential elements of the offense charged or it is fatally defective."

Murphy said he had no comment on the decision or the new complaint.

Jackley said he didn't know when a new trial could be set.

"I'm disappointed that the matter was not able to be tried to a jury next week. However, I believe that the concerns expressed in the court decision regarding the April '03 indictment have been satisfied by the filing of the criminal complaint. And that I look forward to ultimate justice being served for the family of Annie Mae Aquash," he said.

One of Aquash's two daughters, Denise Maloney Pictou of Halifax, Nova Scotia, said earlier this week family members were preparing to travel to Rapid City for the trial. She said Friday they would wait to comment about the judge's decision.

Looking Cloud was convicted in 2004 and sentenced to a mandatory life prison term but could qualify for parole.

Apparently he was ready to testify at Graham's trial.

Looking Cloud was at a Louisiana prison but his status with the federal Bureau of Prisons indicates he's "in status" and he's currently listed as an inmate in a western South Dakota jail.

A third AIM member, Richard Marshall, was indicted separately in August and is scheduled to stand trial in February in Sioux Falls on a charge of aiding and abetting Aquash's murder.

Witnesses at Looking Cloud's trial said he, Graham and another AIM member, Theda Clarke, drove Aquash from Denver 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 acknowledges being in the car from Denver.

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