Have Russell Means' Chickens Come Home to Roost?

"[Russell] Means has reinvented himself more times than a snake sheds its skin. And when cornered, he's still known to strike."---Joe Trimbach

Professor Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School has written that AIM left “… thousands of poverty-stricken Indians, first driven by years of neglect to accept false prophets of violence and then shorn even of that ineffective leadership.”

One of these false prophets is Russell Means.

In the Trimbachs' just-released book, American Indian Mafia, Joseph Trimbach discusses the implications of the extradition of John Graham Patton, who is accused of murdering Anna Mae Aquash in December 1975.

Joseph Trimbach observes:

On June 26, 2007, [the 32nd anniversary of the murder of FBI agents Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams on Pine Ridge] the Supreme Court of British Columbia ordered the extradition of John Graham Patton to the United States.

Obviously, Graham's arrival on U.S. soil will further imperil AIM's legacy. The more immediate concern among former members is his cooperation with federal prosecutors. Dozens of co-conspirators, even minor players who aided and abetted the murder and subsequent cover-up, could face the same fate that awaits Anna Mae's alleged executioner: life in prison. And so they are naturally concerned that Graham will cut a deal and sing like a canary. As Professor Ward Churchill likes to say, the chickens have come home to roost, perhaps one of them being his old pal, Russell Means. For the next several years, U.S. Attorneys could be very busy prosecuting one very old murder case (467).