Paul Charlton

WSJ on the Grand Canyon Controversy

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Here. Or just go to Google news and enter “hualapai grand canyon”.

An excerpt:

The legal battle is testing the limits of business partnerships between tribes and non-Indians and is pitting tribal government leaders against one another. At stake are future profits of the lucrative Skywalk and at least $10 million in profits that the bridge has accumulated—now locked in an escrow account while the tribe fights with Mr. Jin.

“Our business is being destroyed by a handful of self-interested [tribal] government officials who are stealing our business and trampling our rights” said Troy Eid, a lawyer for Mr. Jin and former U.S. attorney for Colorado.

The tribe argues that it is Mr. Jin who “makes a promise, breaks it, then changes his story,” said Paul Charlton, the tribe’s lawyer and former U.S. attorney in Arizona.

Ongoing Denver Post Series: US Attorneys’ Firings

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From the Denver Post:

Grasping for a way to explain the breakdown of justice on America’s Indian reservations and the role of the Justice Department in that failure, Paul Charlton, the former U.S. attorney in Arizona and a Bush appointee, picks this moment:

Talking with superiors about a gruesome double murder on the Navajo reservation, Charlton was stopped midsentence and asked by a high-level Justice Department official why he was involved in a case on the reservation in the first place.

To Charlton, it was suddenly clear that the official didn’t understand the most basic aspect of federal Indian law — that on most reservations, U.S. attorneys are the sole authority empowered to prosecute felony crime there.

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Of the eight fired U.S. attorneys, five had played leadership roles pushing for aggressive Indian Country prosecutions or systemic reform — Charlton, David Iglesias of New Mexico, Margaret Chiara of western Michigan, Daniel Bogden of Nevada and John McKay of western Washington, according to testimony before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.

As U.S. attorney for western Michigan, Margaret Chiara, right, made violent reservation crime a priority but said a bureaucratic culture resisted her efforts. She was one of eight U.S. attorneys whose firings sparked a Capitol Hill uproar. (Grand Rapids Press / Kary Batdorff)