Here are the materials in United States v. Spoonhunter (D. Mont.):
DCT Order Denying Motion for Acquittal
An excerpt:
Defendant attacks only one issue in challenging her conviction: whether the government proved that she acted with intent to defraud the vendors with whom she worked in connection with North American Indian Days. Defendant argues no evidence was presented at trial to prove that she contemplated harm to her victims, or that her actions were done in bad faith.
Here. The order:
The opinion in this case filed on January 18, 2013, and reported at 705 F.3d 1052 is hereby withdrawn. The opinion shall not be cited as precedent by or to any court of the Ninth Circuit. The court will file a new opinion in due course. As the court’s opinion is withdrawn, the government’s petition for rehearing and rehearing en banc is moot.
Materials in this case and related cases are here.
Here is the indictment in United States v. Sheffler (W.D. Mo.):
News coverage here.
Seth J. Fortin has published “The Two-Tiered Program of the Tribal Law and Order Act” (PDF) in the UCLA Law Review Discourse.
Here is the abstract:
The Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 was intended to significantly expand the sentencing powers of tribal courts, raising the maximum sentence for a given offense from one year to three. But the Act requires courts that would take advantage of these new powers to provide significant procedural protections to criminal defendants, while failing to provide the funding most tribal courts would need to make those protections a reality. Moreover, the Act leaves vague and open to interpretation the precise form those protections should take, which is an open invitation to federal courts to scrutinize tribal court procedure; this, in turn, may put tribal courts in the position of choosing between longer sentences and retaining their traditional character. These two obstacles—lack of funding, and the danger to tribal courts’ unique character— mean that the Act is likely to sort tribes into two “tiers”: wealthier or more assimilated tribes will be able to take advantage of the longer sentences, while tribes that cannot afford (whether financially or culturally) to change their practices will be left unable to adequately sentence serious offenders. And because of the way the Act resolves a longstanding ambiguity in Indian law, some tribes in the latter group may be left with less sentencing power than they had previously.
Here is the opinion in United States v. Livingston. An excerpt:
The panel affirmed convictions for mail fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1341) and theft by an officer or employee of a gaming establishment on Indian lands (18 U.S.C. § 1168(b)).
The panel held that the location of the gaming establishment is not an element of the offense under § 1168(b), and that the allegations in the indictment were sufficiently specific to apprise the defendant of the specific offenses with which he was charged.
The panel also held that the district court’s jury instructions correctly defined “intent to defraud,” and that the district court did not abuse its discretion by admitting prior acts evidence under Fed. R. Evid. 404(b).
Here are the materials:
Lower court materials here, here, here, and here.
Jeff Livingston was also the gaming manager at Grand Traverse Band.
Here is the opinion in United States v. Lespier.
Here is the indictment in United States v. Koster (W.D. Mich.):
News coverage here.
“We live here. We engage the community here. We have an understanding of the crimes and the crime scenes, and we have Hopi juries here, and it gives us an advantage in that there are some cases I believe the tribal courts can more effectively prosecute,” she [Jill Engel] says.
Here is the opinion in State v. Clark. State v Clark (PDF)
Briefs and other materials here.
Here is the opinion in United States v. Corsey:
Excerpts:
Over the next few months, Re recorded the defendants as they baited him with an escalating series of lies: Corsey explained that MIBT was the central bank for scores of Native American governments, including the Yamasee Indian tribe, a nation with trillions of dollars in assets.
And:
And in this case, appellants posit, no reasonable investment professional would have bought the conspirators’ absurd story; any broker would have laughed in disbelief the moment he opened an email from a wealthy bank sent from an AOL email address, found doctored copies of T-notes, and learned that a long-disbanded Native American tribe owned them. Thus, the argument goes, because no potential victim of this particular fraud would have ever fallen for it, the appellants’ lies were not “capable of influencing the decision of [any] decisionmaking body.”
Finally:
The twenty-year sentences imposed on appellants are not merely harsh, they are dramatically more severe than can be justified by the crime the appellants committed. This was a clumsy, almost comical, conspiracy to defraud a non-existent investor of three billion dollars. That scheme never came close to fruition. During his first meeting with Thomas Re, Emerson Corsey described Magnolia International Bank and Trust as the central bank for scores of Native American governments, including the Yamasee Indian tribe, which a Wikipedia search would have revealed as a tribal confederation that was broken up and defeated early in the 18th century. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamasee. It took only a brief Google search for Re and his associates to understand that the proposal “smelled”—which is why the appellants were recorded by Re for months before their arrest. At one point, Corsey provided Re with a certificate signed by John Juncal that listed CUSIP numbers for the T-notes; when Re shared the certificate with his colleagues, they responded by bursting into laughter. Even the terms of the proposed deal itself were laughable: the lender of three billion dollars would, according to the appellants, receive fourteen billion dollars in profit over five years. This scheme amounted to a series of absurd lies piled on top of even more absurd lies. Appellants’ conduct was not dangerous because they had absolutely no hope of success.
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