Tulsa World here.
SCOTUSblog here.
Indian Country Today here.
Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl
Tulsa World: Discussions in Baby Girl Case End Without Settlement (Updated)
Here.
Before proceeding with the appeal, the state’s high court required last week’s mediation conference at the Court of Civil Appeals in Tulsa, where the families spent five days in negotiations and returned to the courthouse Monday morning for less than an hour.
The case now goes back to the Oklahoma Supreme Court.
ETA: Additional information with statement from Cherokee Nation Attorney General. It appears that the OK Supreme Court lifted the stay. Here.
“This order, just like any other order from a foreign jurisdiction needs to be filed for domestication with the Cherokee Nation District Court,” said Cherokee Nation Attorney General Todd Hembree. “There is a conflicting Cherokee Nation order concerning a Cherokee Nation citizen on Cherokee Nation land. We are a sovereign nation with a valid and historic court system.
“As Attorney General, I will require that our court system be honored and respected. I took an oath when assuming this office to uphold the laws and constitution of the Cherokee Nation and the United States. Nowhere in that oath is it required that I defend the laws of South Carolina.”
Tulsa World: Still No Negotiated Settlement
Latest Tulsa World Article on Baby Girl Case
This is the third day of hearings. Proceedings are still under a gag order.
Veronica Update from WaPo
Here (h/t How Appealing).
An excerpt:
The late justice Robert H. Jackson famously wrote of his colleagues on the high court: “We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.”
But sometimes the court is final only in the narrow question of law before it. That question decided, it sends the case back to lower courts, where sometimes the whole process starts anew.
Such is the fate of Veronica’s case. If anything, the Supreme Court’s decision has only heightened the stakes surrounding the rights of birth parents, the legal standing of adoptive parents and the sovereignty of Native American tribes.
Latest on Baby Girl Case, with Detailed List of All Oklahoma Courts Involved
Here. Updated with Cherokee Nation press release on the extradition order signed for Dusten Brown by Governor Fallin yesterday evening.
Where the Baby Veronica case has been:
1. Nowata County Courthouse: South Carolina’s court order to transfer custody had to be “domesticated” by an Oklahoma court, making it enforceable here. The case went to Nowata because Brown and Veronica live there.
2. Cherokee County Courthouse: With Veronica staying with her grandparents on Cherokee Nation trust land in Tahlequah, the Capobiancos filed a “writ of habeas corpus” to have Brown and his family brought to court. They hoped to get an order to transfer custody immediately, but instead agreed to enter mediation.
3. Sequoyah County Courthouse: Facing a felony warrant for custodial interference in South Carolina, Brown surrendered himself to authorities in Sequoyah County, apparently because a judge was on duty there to handle the bond arrangements. He faces an extradition hearing next week.
4. Cherokee Nation Courthouse: Before leaving the state for National Guard duties in July, Brown asked a tribal court to grant guardianship of Veronica to her stepmother and paternal grandparents. The Cherokee Nation has asserted jurisdiction because Brown and Veronica are members of the tribe.
5. Oklahoma Supreme Court: Brown and the Cherokee Nation are appealing the Nowata judge’s decision to send Veronica back to South Carolina without a best interest hearing.
6. Muskogee County Courthouse: For reasons not made public, the judge in Cherokee County removed herself from the case. And it was apparently reassigned to a judge in Muskogee.
Dreveskracht Commentary on Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl
Here. An excerpt:
The Supreme Court’s decision in Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl is most certainly a blow to Indian sovereignty by way of an assault on core notions of Indian family and tribal identity. Yet what is even more disturbing is how the “Baby Veronica” ruling so vividly highlights the Roberts Court’s deep investment in white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, heterosexism, and a coercive binary gender system. Adoptive Couple is about far more than the rights of adoptive parents. The decision should serve as a warning to all marginalized groups such as Indians, ethnic minorities, the lower class, or the LGBT community: If given the opportunity the High Court will construe legislation to serve its own institutionalized interests, in spite of the law’s intent.
Baby Veronica Update
Thanks to How Appealing:
“To Oklahoma’s American Indian tribes, Veronica is a battle cry for cultures”: This article appears today in The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina. And today’s edition of The Tulsa World contains an article headlined “Baby Veronica case: Victory unlikely for either side as mediation begins.”
Update in Baby Veronica
From SCOTUSblog.
An excerpt:
The adoption of the little girl known in a child custody saga as “Baby Veronica” has been approved by a family court in Charleston, South Carolina, the child’s biological father notified the Supreme Court on Thursday. Attorneys for Dusten Brown, a member of the Cherokee Nation, disclosed the family court’s action in the final filing in the Court in his attempt to postpone the child’s adoption by anyone other than him or his family.The action by the state court, giving full legal custody to the child to Matt and Melanie Capobianco, a non-Indian couple living near Charleston, came yesterday at a closed hearing. All of the materials of that proceeding, including the final adoption and custody order, are under seal, by state law. The family court also approved a “transition plan,” the details of which are also secret, that will mean the child — living with her father in Oklahoma for about nineteen months — will not be transferred immediately to her new home. A counseling arrangement apparently is part of the transition plan. “Baby Veronica” will be four years old next month.
***
All of the legal filings that appear to be reaching the Court in this round of the dispute have now been logged in, including a brief opposing the father’s efforts, by a South Carolina woman, Jo M. Prowell, who was appointed by the family court as the guardian of “Baby Veronica” during the legal proceedings — including the review of the case by the Supreme Court, leading to a decision against the father’s adoption prospects on June 25.
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