tribal court

Tribal and Federal Authorities Cooperate to Arrest 17 on Standing Rock

Adrea Korthase5 Comments

The article from the Bismarck Tribune is here. An excerpt:

Besides the FBI and BIA, the U.S. Marshal’s Service, Homeland Security Investigations, Drug Enforcement Administration, Sioux County Sheriff’s Department and U.S. Parole and Pre-Trial Services also were involved in the investigation and arrests Tuesday morning on the reservation that straddles North Dakota and South Dakota.

Operation Prairie Thunder resulted in 10 people being charged in U.S. District Court in North Dakota, two people being charged in U.S. District Court in South Dakota and five people charged in Standing Rock Tribal Court.

and

In another unusual move, U.S. Magistrate Judge Charles Miller traveled to Standing Rock Reservation south of Mandan on Tuesday morning to hold first appearances for the 10 people charged in U.S. District Court in North Dakota.

“It’s very, very rare” for a federal judge to travel to a reservation for court hearings, Purdon said. “I’m aware of it at least once in North Dakota, many, many years ago.”

Paul Spruhan on the Meaning of Due Process at Navajo

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Paul Spruhan (Navajo DOJ) has posted his chapter, “The Meaning of Due Process in the Navajo Nation.” This is a chapter from “The Indian Civil Rights Act at Forty.”

Here is the abstract:

The article is a contribution to the Indian Civil Rights Act at Forty, and describes the Navajo Nation’s approach to the concept of due process under the Indian Civil Rights Act and the Navajo Bill of Rights. It traces the evolution of the Navajo Supreme Court’s views on due process from direct application of federal definitions to the development of a unique Navajo doctrine informed by federal constitutional doctrine, but ultimately reflecting Navajo values of fairness. Based on the discussion of the development of Navajo due process, the article suggests the Navajo Nation’s approach in synthesizing federal doctrine with tribal values can be a model for other tribes grappling with developing modern court systems that emphasize jurisprudential sovereignty through the development and application of unique tribal law.

Strange Case: CA5 Affirms Fed. Conviction of Man Fraudulently Licensed by the Cherokee Nation Bar

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is the opinion in United States v. Richardson.

A few tidbits:

On May 12, 2010, Richardson entered his appearance as Reyes’s attorney before the Board of Immigration Appeals, stating that he was admitted to practice in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the Cherokee Nation, and filed an appeal of the immigration judge’s order that had removed Reyes to Mexico. This latter action was done notwithstanding the fact that Reyes had already been removed from the country.

***

The Clerk’s Office was aware of the irregularities with Richardson’s license because on June 29, Richardson had given Flores a “motion and order for admission pro hac vice.” On the motion, Richardson had filled out the date; case caption; his name; and his firm’s name (The Law Office of Dale A. Richardson), address, and telephone number. He had signed it, as well. He had indicated that he was an attorney licensed in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and in the Cherokee Nation, and provided purported bar numbers for each jurisdiction. Richardson had submitted additional documentation with the motion and order, including: (1) a Cherokee Nation “attorney badge”; (2) a certificate from the American Bar Association (“ABA”); and (3) bar cards from the ABA, Massachusetts Bar Association (“MBA”), and Cherokee Nation Bar Association. Flores file-stamped the motion as received in court on June 29, 2010. Relying on the representations in the motion and order, Judge Hacker granted the motion and signed it before the Clerk’s Office verified Richardson’s license information out of concern that verification would require holding Reyes in jail for another 24 hours when the Government had already moved to dismiss the case. The motion was then sent to the Clerk’s Office for verification.

***

On March 17, 2009, Richardson had applied for admission to practice in the Cherokee Nation, a tribal government in Oklahoma that has judicial authority over lands held by the tribe. The Supreme Court of the Cherokee Nation admits attorneys into its bar, provided the attorney submits an application and is a licensed attorney in good standing in another jurisdiction. The Cherokee Nation does not license attorneys, but only admits them to practice in its court system. On his application, Richardson stated he had graduated from “The California School of Law” in 2007 and was licensed in California. He also had submitted a certificate of good standing from the Supreme Court of California that turned out to be fabricated from a basic template. Investigators also learned that the California bar number Richardson had provided on his application belonged to David Allen Richardson, a Sacramento, California, attorney who had been admitted to the California bar in December 2007. David Richardson testified that he never gave Richardson permission to use his bar number.
On April 30, 2009, Richardson received notice that his admission had been approved, although he never actually took the oath of admission. Along with its notice of admission, the Cherokee Nation had sent Richardson a bar card and assigned him a bar number. From these materials, Richardson had fabricated a Cherokee Nation “attorney badge.” The FBI learned that the Cherokee Nation does not issue badges and, as pointed out during the trial, the badge had the seal of the State of Oklahoma instead of the seal of the Cherokee Nation. Richardson was disbarred by the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court in October 2010, after it learned he was not, in fact, licensed to practice law in any jurisdiction.
The FBI also learned that, on November 4, 2009, Richardson had applied for admission to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma under the name, David Allen Richardson, Jr. He had claimed to have attended “The Washington College of Law” and the “University of London,” and to have been a member of the bars of the Cherokee Nation, Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts. He had submitted with his application his business card, ABA card, Cherokee Nation bar card, a certificate of good standing from the Supreme Court of the State of California, and a letter from the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court notifying Richardson of his admission to its court.

Public Radio Coverage of Grand Canyon Skywalk Controversy

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here, h/t Pechanga.

An excerpt:

The Hualapai council members say the unfinished site is an embarrassment to the tribe, which approved the project despite some internal objections about building on land roughly 30 miles from a place central to the Hualapai creation story. Traditional tribal belief places man’s origin on Hualapai lands.

“I believe the canyon is a sacred place. The Hualapai look at is as a church. Why take trash and throw it in the church. I voted against it,” said Philip Bravo, a former council member. “What does the tribe have out there? A half-finished building.”

Angry at the developer, the tribe passed an ordinance last year creating a legal path to effectively cancel the developer’s contract through the sovereign right of eminent domain.

The tribe set compensation for the seizure at $11.4 million, a sum they said represents the fair value of a project that the Las Vegas-based developer says is worth over $100 million.

“They took everything. And then the tribal court issued an order that we were trespassers if we were even there. You do understand this is like Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, don’t you?” said Troy Eid, a lawyer for the Grand Canyon Skywalk Development Corporation, which built the skywalk.

There is little doubt that tribes can legally seize property for the public good, much like a state or the federal government. But by seizing a non-tangible asset of a non-Indian company as a way to escape a contentious business deal, the tribe may have stepped into untested waters.

“I think on first glance the tribe is exercising a power that they have. Whether they are exercising it wisely is a different question,” said Addie Rolnick, an expert in Indian law at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

Federal Trade Commission Amended Complaint against Martin Webb’s Payday Financial Entity

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Here is the complaint in FTC v. Payday Financial LLC (D. S.D.).

Other docs are here at the FTC site:

March 7, 2012

September 12, 2011

Minnesota Court Recognizes Tribal Court Judgment of $19 Million against Gaming World International

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Here is the news coverage.

We posted about the tribal court decision here.

Update in Dollar General v. Mississippi Choctaw: Tribal Jurisdiction Upheld

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

Here are the materials in Dolgen Corp. v. Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians (S.D. Miss.):

Dollar General Motion for Summary J

Mississippi Band Opposition

Memorandum Opinion and Order

Materials from a 2008 TRO motion in the same case are here.

Navajo Nation to Offer Bonds

Adrea Korthase1 Comment

Bloomberg Businessweek article here. An excerpt

The largest American Indian tribe, the Navajo Nation, plans to issue its first bonds in a $120 million offering that would be the biggest sale of nongaming tribal debt in at least a decade. The tribe intends to use the money to create thousands of jobs and stimulate the economy on its reservation in America’s Southwest. Despite the Navajo Nation’s energy revenue, more than 37 percent of the reservation’s 170,000 residents lived below the federal poverty level in 2009. “I am concerned with the time when we won’t have revenues from our natural resources,” said Katherine Benally, head of the Navajo Nation Council’s resources and development committee, while taking a break from a council budget session in Window Rock, Ariz. “We need to be ready for that.”

and

The Navajo bonds will be sold to institutional investors in a private placement as soon as yearend and will likely include both taxable and tax-exempt debt, says Goe, the bond counsel. The Navajos intend to seek investors willing to settle disputes in tribal courts, a first for a bond issue, Goe says. Clarkson says the requirement “would be a reaffirmation of the legitimacy of tribal courts—this time from the financial market.” Yet it may also make the issue harder to sell. Lyle Fitterer, who helps oversee $26 billion of municipal bonds at Wells Capital Management in Menomonee Falls, Wis., says the tribal-court stipulation “is one more hurdle in terms of investing in a deal like this” and could lead to the Navajos paying higher rates.

Treaty Rights and the Cherokee Freedmen Decision

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

This isn’t a post on the merits of the Freedmen case, but instead a rumination about the import of U.S.–tribal treaty rights in tribal courts. Generally, do treaty rights have legal import in tribal court?

My reading of the Nash case (here) is that anyone claiming to assert treaty rights against an Indian tribe who was a party to the treaty may be foreclosed from bringing those claims without the presence of the United States (the other party to the treaty) as a party to the litigation. If that reading has broad implications for Indian treaties, then no treaty right could effectively be litigated in tribal court without the presence of the United States. An odd result, to be sure.

This isn’t a purely academic question. A few years back, the Ninth Circuit wondered why it was still deciding treaty rights subproceedings in United States v. Washington that don’t involve either the United States or Washington, or really any of the underlying issues about the treaty right. Many of the cases are intertribal conflicts. There may be an intertribal court for the Puget Sound treaty tribes someday, all without the presence of the United States. And properly so.

This all suggests the United States doesn’t need to be a party to treaty rights litigation in every case.

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