Criminal – Page 34 – Turtle Talk

While lawmakers have long known that Native American women experience gender-based violence at higher rates than any other population, lawmakers historically have addressed these harms by implementing jurisdictional changes: removing tribal jurisdiction entirely, limiting tribal jurisdiction, or returning jurisdiction to tribes in a piecemeal fashion. The result is a “jurisdictional maze” that law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and courts are unable to successfully administer to bring perpetrators to justice. This Article is the first to identify what I call “jurisdictional transparency”—or clear, easily ascertainable rules governing courts’ jurisdiction—as a core value of the American legal system and will argue that a lack of jurisdictional transparency over criminal prosecutions in Indian country contributes to the excessive rates of domestic violence, sexual assault, and rape against Native American women. Because arguments for or against sovereignty are divisive and often put a swift end to productive dialogue, this has often led to the layering of more jurisdictional rules on top of the current system. Jurisdictional transparency, on the other hand, advocates an approach that is both more fundamental and more attainable: allocating criminal jurisdiction in Indian country in a way that can be easily determined at the outset of a case.

The Article begins by examining jurisdictional rules in other contexts while highlighting the federal courts’ continuous demand for clear jurisdictional rules in the interest of judicial efficiency and public access to the courts. With this backdrop, the Article then illuminates the discrepancy between such transparency demands and the opaque jurisdictional rules in Indian Country, using key case examples to demonstrate the system’s failures. Finally, the Article proposes a solution that is reflected in numerous facets of the law: jurisdictional transparency. Such a solution has a procedural guise capable of penetrating a polarized political climate while lifting the opacity that has prevented thousands of Native American women from accessing justice.

C-SPAN Link to McGirt Oral Argument

May 11, 2020Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here.

SCOTUSBlog Preview of McGirt Argument with Bob Anderson

May 11, 2020Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here.

McGirt background materials here.

Rebecca Nagle Repudiating Oklahoma’s Factual Claims in McGirt/Murphy

May 8, 2020Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is “Oklahoma’s Suspect Argument in Front of the Supreme Court — The state claims that affirming a reservation in eastern Oklahoma could lead to thousands of state criminal convictions being thrown out. But that argument doesn’t seem to be based on facts” from the Atlantic.

The briefs are here.

Bloomberg News Profile of McGirt Argument

May 8, 2020Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is “Gorsuch Gets Moment as Decider in Case Evoking Trail of Tears.”

The briefs are here.

Ninth Circuit Again Rejects Lezmond Mitchell Challenges to Death Penalty, but Two Judges Question the Punishment

April 30, 2020Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is the opinion in Mitchell v. United States.

Judge Christen noted that this is the first intra-tribal carjacking crime to result in death:

I join the majority’s considered opinion in full, but write separately because the lengthy history of this case may make it easy to lose track of the fact that Mitchell did not receive the death penalty for his murder convictions. Mitchell was sentenced to death because, in the course of committing their atrocious crimes, he and his accomplice also committed a carjacking. In my view, it is worth pausing to consider why Mitchell faces the prospect of being the first person to be executed by the federal government for an intra-Indian crime, committed in Indian country, by virtue of a conviction for carjacking resulting in death.

Concurring Judge Hurwitz called on the AG to reconsider this matter:

I write separately to stress a point aptly made earlier in the long history of this case by Judge Reinhardt. See Mitchell v. United States, 790 F.3d 881, 894–97 (9th Cir. 2015) (Reinhardt, J., dissenting in part). The heinous crimes that gave rise to this case occurred entirely within the territory of the sovereign Navajo Nation. The defendant is a Navajo, as were the victims. The Navajo Nation has, from the outset of this case, opposed imposition of the death penalty on the defendant, as have members of the victims’ family