Here are the materials in United States v. Kirkaldie (D. Mont.):
And in United States v. Stewart (D. Mont.):
20 Stewart Motion to Dismiss + Tribal Court Docs
Criminal
Sixth Circuit Affirms Conviction of Second Saginaw Chippewa Member for DV
Here is the unpublished opinion in United States v. Pego.This one is Samuel John Pego. We posted on the earlier appeal by Waylon Pego here.
Article on the use of banishment in the rural Alaska Native village of Tanana
After the recent shooting deaths of two Alaska state troopers, the village of Tanana has turned to banishment as a way of protecting the community. The use of banishment is very controversial, raising a host of legal questions, but the circumstances of this village demonstrate how few options community members feel that they have under current jurisdictional conditions.
Full article here.
The Tanana Village Council, the Athabascan Indian tribal authority in the village of 250, is taking steps to expel two men whose actions contributed to the homicides and who have threatened other community members, council Chairman Curtis Sommer said.
“This is the only way we have to remove individuals who are — how do we say it? — who are dangerous to members of the community,” Sommer said.
The action is infrequent in Alaska, and when it is used, some question whether a tribal entity has the right to limit access to a community otherwise governed by state law. Those who are banished rarely contest the action publicly, and it isn’t clear if banished residents go on to cause problems in other communities because no one tracks them. . . .
The state can’t afford to pay for law enforcement in small villages like this but they also refuse to let tribes have full authority over law enforcement, beyond an unarmed public safety officer, Kendall-Miller said. State troopers are flown in to deal with violence, but they can sometimes take days to arrive. . . .
Sommer concedes banishment is a “slippery slope.”
“It’s got to be very significant circumstances that would warrant this, either violent assaults or murder,” he said. “At what point do we draw the line on this? I do not know. I do know it’s not going to be used frivolously just to get back at someone.”
The village council will ask the state to enforce banishments. The Alaska Department of Law said it would carefully evaluate a banishment order. Kendall-Miller has seen unofficial support in the past.
“We have seen state police officers that have attempted to accommodate the tribal council’s blue ticket orders by helping to prevent individuals from coming back,” Kendall-Miller said. “It has been an informal arrangement that was done out of necessity.”
“If they do not enforce it, we will enforce it ourselves. We will get a group of men together and go to that person and tell him to leave and to not come back.”
H/T to SW.
NYTs Magazine: “Who Killed Anna Mae?”
Here. An excerpt:
On Feb. 24, 1976, a rancher in South Dakota was installing a fence on land situated along the edge of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation when he spotted a body at the bottom of a 30-foot embankment. The badly decomposed corpse, in jeans and a maroon ski jacket, lay with knees pushed up toward chest. A coroner later determined that the woman had been dead for more than two months. The back of her head was matted with blood, and there was a single bullet wound at the base of her skull. She had been shot at close range.
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Amicus Brief Filed in United States v. Zepeda
Here:
Criminal Defense Attorney Amicus
Prior posts here (order granting en banc review), and links to briefs here.
Sixth Circuit Affirms D.V. Convictions of Saginaw Chippewa Member
Here is the unpublished opinion in United States v. Pego.
We posted the indictment and a procedural matter on the blog.
Huy: NCAI President Presses Sec. State Kerry Re: UN American Indigenous Prisoners’ Rights Inquiry
Pascua Yaqui Tribe set to prosecute first non-Indian under VAWA
News coverage includes an overview of the challenges Tribes have faced when non-Indian men batter Indian women on the reservation, a little about the battle to get the VAWA provisions passed, and information about the prosecutor, judge, and public defender who will be involved with this first case. Full article here.
Press Release from Pascua Yaqui regarding the VAWA pilot program here.
From the article:
Tribal police chief Michael Valenzuela drove through darkened desert streets, turned into a Circle K convenience store and pointed to the spot beyond the reservation line where his officers used to take the non-Indian men who battered Indian women.
“We would literally drive them to the end of the reservation and tell them to beat it,” Valenzuela said. “And hope they didn’t come back that night. They almost always did.”
About three weeks ago, at 2:45 a.m., the tribal police were called to the reservation home of an Indian woman who was allegedly being assaulted in front of her two children. They said her 36-year-old non-
Indian husband, Eloy Figueroa Lopez, had pushed her down on the couch and was violently choking her with both hands.This time, the Yaqui police were armed with a new law that allows Indian tribes, which have their own justice system, to prosecute non-Indians. Instead of driving Lopez to the Circle K and telling him to leave the reservation, they arrested him.
Inside a sand-colored tribal courthouse set here amid the saguaro-dotted land of the Pascua Yaqui people, the law backed by the Obama administration and passed by Congress last year is facing its first critical test. . . .
Some members of Congress had fought hard to derail the legislation, arguing that non-Indian men would be unfairly convicted without due process by sovereign nations whose unsophisticated tribal courts were not equal to the American criminal justice system.
“They thought that tribal courts wouldn’t give the non-Indians a fair shake,” said Pascua Yaqui Attorney General Amanda Lomayesva. “Congressmen all were asking, how are non-Indians going to be tried by a group of Indian jurors?”
Against that opposition last year, the Obama administration was able to push through only the narrowest version of a law to prosecute non-Indians. While it covers domestic and dating-violence cases involving Native Americans on the reservation, the law does not give tribes jurisdiction to prosecute child abuse or crimes, including sexual assault, that are committed by non-Indians who are “strangers” to their victims. In addition, the law does not extend to Native American women in Alaska.
“It was a compromise the tribes had to make,” Lomayesva said. “It only partially fixes the problem.”
Still, what will play out over the next months on the Pascua Yaqui reservation is being watched closely by the Justice Department and by all of Indian country. The tribe’s officials are facing intense scrutiny and thorny legal challenges as they prepare for their first prosecution of a non-Indian man.
“Everyone’s feeling pressure about these cases,” said Pascua Yaqui Chief Prosecutor Alfred Urbina. “They’re the first cases. No one wants to screw anything up.”
Tenth Circuit Affirms Murder Conviction Arising on San Ildefonso Pueblo
Here is the opinion in United States v. Romero.
Woolman and Deer on a Feminist Lawyering Approach to Protecting Native Mothers and Their Children
Joanna Woolman and Sarah Deer have published “Protecting Native Mothers and Their Children: A Feminist Lawyering Approach” in the William Mitchell Law Review.
From the introduction:
A mother killing her child is a shocking event. In the United States, our child protection system seeks to prevent this type of horror, along with countless other acts that harm children. Despite having a system designed to protect children from harm, hundreds of children are killed by their mothers each year. Each death represents a failure of our systems and communities, and individuals within both, to protect children. The typical response to filicide tends to focus on the actions of the individual mother rather than the failures of the system. Our current criminal justice system often deals with these cases and mothers harshly, not taking into account the unique, gendered circumstances that lead a mother to this desperate act. Society is quick to place blame on the archetype of a selfish, unfeeling mother who kills a child because she feels inconvenienced by motherhood. Neonaticide, a subcategory of filicide, is particularly fraught with extremely negative life circumstances, including mental illness, substance abuse, and trauma. These circumstances, in many cases, could be recognized and remedied with the right intervention. We believe that holistic, feminist legal representation could achieve this
intervention in some cases, possibly preventing the extreme, tragic outcome of the death of a child.
Turtle Talk 
You must be logged in to post a comment.