U.S. acquittal in N.S. woman's 1975 death

A U.S. jury has acquitted a man in the killing of a Nova Scotian woman on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation 34 years earlier, at the height of violence involving the militant American Indian Movement.

Richard Marshall was accused of providing the gun that killed AIM activist Annie Mae Pictou-Aquash in December 1975.

Jurors deliberated for less than two hours Thursday before reaching the verdict on the seventh day of the federal trial in Rapid City, S.D. Marshall hugged his lawyer when the verdict was read, and cheering erupted in the courtroom.

Marshall nodded and smiled at jurors as they departed.

Pictou-Aquash took part in AIM's 1973 armed occupation of the Pine Ridge village of Wounded Knee, a two-month siege that included gun battles with federal officers.

Prosecutors believe AIM leaders later ordered Pictou-Aquash killed because they thought she was a government informant. Federal investigators have denied Pictou-Aquash was an informant.

Marshall was found not guilty of murder or aiding and abetting murder.

During the trial that began April 14, the government's key witness described Marshall as an enforcer for a leader of AIM, a group that clashed with tribal and federal agents in the 1970s.

Arlo Looking Cloud, who is serving a life sentence for his role in Pictou-Aquash's death, testified that Marshall provided the murder weapon.

Looking Cloud also acknowledged years of drug and alcohol abuse and lying to authorities. Dana Hanna, Marshall's lawyer, said Looking Cloud's testimony was not credible.