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stepfather, says Moeller wasn't psychologically qualified to dismiss his appeals.
•She claimed that Moeller's years of confinement and psychological problems have made him incapable of making voluntary and rational decisions.
•Moeller recently asked a federal judge to dismiss his appeals and let him die.
•Judge Piersol has upheld the constitutionality of Moeller's conviction and sentence, but he hadn't ruled on the constitutionality of a South Dakota Department of Corrections execution policy that was changed last year.
•Arkansas attorneys who had been representing Moeller had hoped to press forward with claims that South Dakota's use of the drug pentobarbital in a one-drug method would inflict cruel and unusual punishment, but his successful request to dismiss the case made that impossible.
•Moeller's new attorney, Mark Marshall, has said that the motion to appoint Nichols as a friend in the case appeared to be an effort by the Arkansas attorneys to continue to insert their wishes over Moeller's.
•Also on Wednesday, the ACLU stepped into the case and asked Judge Piersol to unseal about 20 documents that had been filed under an order protecting the manufacturer and supplier of the drug pentobarbital and the identity of the execution team.
•The organization asked that the court unseal the documents with appropriate redactions.
•Authorities say Moeller kidnapped O'Connell from a Sioux Falls convenience store, drove her to a secluded area near the Big Sioux River, then raped and killed her. Her naked body was found the next day. She had been stabbed and her throat was slashed.
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•KYLE, S.D. (AP) -- The first of four ceremonies to honor the life of former American Indian Movement activist Russell Means is under way on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
•Some 500 people gathered at the Little Wound High School in Kyle as Means' ashes arrived Wednesday afternoon by horseback.
•Means died Monday at his home on the Pine Ridge reservation after battling cancer. He was 72.
•A onetime leader of the American Indian Movement, Means called national attention to the plight of impoverished tribes and lamented the waning of their culture. Even after leaving AIM, he was a cultural presence who appeared in several mov

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