Associated Press - July 28, 2009 1:35 PM ET

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) - A federal appeals court has upheld the dismissal of a key charge against 1 of 2 men accused in the 1975 slaying of a fellow American Indian Movement member.

John Graham has been facing federal charges that he killed or aided and abetted the murder of Annie Mae Aquash on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which abuts Nebraska's Dawes and Sheridan counties.

U.S. District Judge Lawrence Piersol threw out the first indictment against Graham because it did not show that either Graham or Aquash belonged to a federally recognized American Indian tribe. When prosecutors reindicted Graham, Piersol again dismissed a similar charge against him.

The appeals court agreed that both indictments were flawed because they did not prove that Graham was an American Indian.

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