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Through an unlikely pair of criminal cases against Native Americans, lawyers for the tribe argued that the state of Oklahoma didn't have jurisdiction to prosecute them; only the tribe did.
Jul 26, 2023 · The McGirt and Castro-Huerta decisions, coupled with the desire of certain Oklahoma state officials to assert state dominance over tribes, create the potential for a new round of tribal-state disputes to permeate the Oklahoma Indian relationship.
The US Supreme Court has ruled about half of Oklahoma belongs to Native Americans, in a landmark case that also quashed a child rape conviction. The justices decided 5-4 that an eastern chunk...
Jul 30, 2020 · On July 9, 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the case McGirt v. Oklahoma that much of the state of Oklahoma falls within an Indian reservation, potentially one of the most consequential legal decisions for Native Americans in decades that could have far-reaching implications.
- Background of The Case
- History of The Creek Reservation
- What Is allotment?
- How Do Courts Decide Where Reservation Boundaries Are?
- The Decision in Mcgirt v. Oklahoma
- Impact of Mcgirt and Later Cases
Jimcy McGirt, a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, was convicted of several serious sex crimes in an Oklahoma state court in 1997. The state court sentenced him to two 500-year sentences and a life sentence for his various crimes. McGirt sought post-conviction relief, a type of appeal where a criminal defendant asks the courts for a new tri...
In 1832, the Muscogee Nation agreed to leave lands in Alabama and Georgia and move to lands set aside in Oklahoma. The Muscogee Nation was one of five tribes, along with the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, and Cherokee Nations, forced to leave their homes during the Trail of Tears. The land they were given in Oklahoma was known as the Creek Reservati...
When Native reservations were initially created, they were generally contiguous blocks of "trust land." However, in the late 1800s, the federal government used a policy known as "allotment" in an attempt to assimilate Native tribes into the non-Native population. For many years, the Supreme Court has grappled with the question of whether allotment ...
Only Congress can establish or dissolve a reservation, and only Congress can enter into treaties with Native tribes. So courts must look at statutes passed by Congress to determine what powers and rights different reservations have. Before McGirt, the Supreme Court examined treaties and statutes regarding reservations using a test it developed in S...
The main question presented to the court in McGirt was whether the Creek Reservation still exists today. If it did, the federal Major Crimes Act would give jurisdiction over McGirt's criminal prosecution only to tribal authorities and the federal government. In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court held that the Creek Reservation remains intact. Oklahoma a...
Recognition of a reservation means that Native defendants will be prosecuted by the federal or tribal governments, not the state government. As Justice Gorsuch writes in the majority opinion, “nothing we might say today could unsettle Oklahoma's authority to try non-Indians for crimes against non-Indians on the lands in question." However, Oklahoma...
Jul 24, 2020 · On July 9, 2020, the Supreme Court announced its decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma—hailed by some as the “most significant Indian Law case of the century.” In a 5-4 ruling, the Court held that land reserved for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in the 19th century remained “Indian country” for criminal jurisdiction purposes.
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McGirt v. Oklahoma, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a landmark [1] [2] United States Supreme Court case which held that the domain reserved for the Muscogee Nation by Congress in the 19th century has never been disestablished and constitutes Indian country for the purposes of the Major Crimes Act, meaning that the State of Oklahoma has no right to ...
