Cherokee Nation working to deal with avalanche of McGirt cases

Grant D. Crawford, Tahlequah Daily Press, Okla.
·3 min read

Apr. 30—The Cherokee Nation continues to adapt to the U.S. Supreme Court's McGirt decision, and its criminal justice system has taken on a significant amount of work since the ruling was handed down in 2020.

During the tribe's Rules Committee meeting Thursday, CN Marshal Service Director Shannon Buhl said the agency has been busy. In the past 11 days, the Marshal Service has been assigned a number of major cases. Among them are two homicides, an assault and battery with a deadly weapon, a shooting with intent to kill, a home invasion, a standoff with warrant service, a drive-by shooting, two child abuse cases, one child neglect case, a stolen vehicle with a county officer-involved shooting, assault and battery on a security officer, a prisoner escape and assault on a police officer, and a child sexual abuse case.

"That is our new life at the Marshal Service," said Buhl. "I wish I could be happy about all those cases, but I'm not. But we will do our due diligence to make sure we will work every one of the cases that we receive and make it a top priority — make sure that justice is served in all these cases."

Meanwhile, the CN Attorney General's Office has been keeping up with cases in the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. AG Sara Hill said the court decided in several cases Thursday that the Cherokee reservation was never disestablished. Hill believes the majority of those cases will be handled in federal court, although one could wind up in tribal court.

Since her last report to the committee, the number of cases filed in tribal court has grown exponentially. Last month, Hill's office had filed 375 cases since the beginning of January.

"From the 25th of March to the 29th of April, we now have 660," Hill said. "That's not quite a mathematical doubling of the total number of cases, but it's getting close. That's the level of increase that we're seeing. I expect it will continue at that rate."

The AG's Office also has also received 67 referrals for juvenile offenders since the beginning of the year.

Currently, Hill's team is working on transferring cases into a new system.

"Previously we used a paper file system, and we had a case management system that wasn't really well-suited to the kind of prosecution the AG's office is responsible for now," said Hill. "So we've been transferring cases over into PPK, which is the system that Tulsa and Oklahoma County use. It will be a paperless system, but of course, it's a lot of front-end investment in trying to get those cases transferred from paper files into our new filing system."

What's next

The next Cherokee Nation Rules Committee meeting is tentatively scheduled for May 27 at 1 p.m. All of the tribe's council meetings can be viewed on the Cherokee Nation YouTube page.

Recommended Stories

  • Police reform, banning assault weapons, looking beyond COVID-19: Takeaways from Joe Biden's address to Congress

    "I can report to the nation: America is on the move again. Turning peril into possibility. Crisis into opportunity ," Biden said to Congress.

  • Slain soldier Vanessa Guillen had reported sexual harassment but leadership did nothing

    The harassment was unrelated to her killing, according to an Army report released Friday.

  • Anxiety led dozens to faint or get dizzy after Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine, CDC says

    Five mass COVID-19 vaccination sites in California, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa and North Carolina reported 64 anxiety-related events.

  • 3M hit with $6M in damages after earplug trial

    EDITORS NOTE: ARMY PHOTOS WERE SUPPLIED BY PLAINTIFF DAVE HENDERSON, A U.S. FIRST LIEUTENANT DURING DEPLOYMENTS TO IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN.Industrial giant 3M was found liable on Friday for hearing damage suffered by three U.S. military veterans, who accused the company of covering up design defects in its earplugs.The jury awarded the plaintiffs $830,500 in compensatory damages and $6.3 million in punitive damages, a major blow to 3M which faces 200,000 similar lawsuits. The company was accused of hiding design flaws, fudging test results and failing to instruct the military in proper use of the earplugs, which were used by the Army between 2007 and 2013. 3M, which makes a wide range of products including face masks and Post-It notes, said in a statement after the verdict that it did not believe the plaintiffs met their burden in proving the plugs were defectively or negligently designed or that the plugs caused injuries, adding that it believed there were multiple grounds for appeal. Shares of 3M on the New York Stock Exchange fell more than a percent after the verdict.

  • One woman’s counterfeit coupon scheme cost stores $31 million in losses, feds say

    Her husband is accused of helping her test the coupons at stores, selling them to his coworkers and mailing them to customers.

  • NASA is giving its Ingenuity helicopter a surprise second mission on Mars

    Ingenuity's flights have gone so well that NASA has completely changed its plans. The helicopter gets at least another month to test new capabilities.

  • Minnesota reports 16 COVID-19 deaths and 1,877 infections

    Sixteen COVID-19 deaths were reported Friday in Minnesota along with 1,877 infections with the novel coronavirus that causes the respiratory disease. The daily figures raise Minnesota's totals to 7,144 COVID-19 deaths and 575,812 diagnosed infections in the pandemic — with the state on the apparent downside of a third wave of viral spread. The seven-day average positivity rate of COVID-19 ...

  • Rock Your World gives Hall of Famer Ron McAnally a shot at elusive Kentucky Derby win

    Ron McAnally is a Hall of Fame trainer who never won the Kentucky Derby. He has a shot at winning the 147th running of the race as breeder of Rock Your World.

  • Woman who called police on Black delivery driver faces hate crime charge, CA cops say

    She used “hateful language disparaging people of color,” authorities said.

  • 100-year-old sturgeon one of the largest ever caught in the US, Michigan officials say

    Officials called it a “river monster.”

  • Mars helicopter aces 4th flight, gets extra month of flying

    NASA’s little Mars helicopter has gotten a reprieve. Instead of wrapping up flight tests at the beginning of May, NASA is giving its Ingenuity helicopter at least an extra month to tackle tough new terrain and serve as a scout for its companion rover, Perseverance. For Friday's trip, Ingenuity traveled 872 feet (266 meters) at a height of 16 feet (5 meters) for two minutes — considerably farther and longer than before.

  • Twisted Sister awarded $1.2m from Clive Palmer over copyright claim

    Australian billionaire Clive Palmer used a version of We're Not Gonna Take It when he ran for parliament.

  • Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene are hitting the road together on a national 'America First Tour'

    Controversial GOP-ers Gaetz and Greene will make their first stop at a Florida retirement community known as The Villages, on May 7.

  • ‘Been a bleep show.’ Reaction to Aaron Rodgers wanting to leave Green Bay Packers

    Rodgers reportedly wants to be traded or is refusing to play in 2021.

  • Peru presidential front-runner Castillo rushed to clinic, suspends campaigning

    Peruvian front-running left-wing presidential candidate Pedro Castillo was rushed to a clinic in Lima on Thursday for "respiratory" illness, forcing him to suspend campaigning, the candidate's party said on social media. Castillo, a 51-year-old primary school teacher set to face right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori in a runoff in early June, fell ill shortly after arriving in the capital following several days of campaigning in northern Peru. Castillo's political party, Peru Libre, announced the situation on Twitter but did not immediately provide further details.

  • Zuckerberg Gobbles Up Another Big Chunk of Hawaii Beachfront

    Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photos via GettyMark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan have nearly doubled their controversial land holdings in Hawaii, after buying almost 600 acres on Kauai from a non-profit for $53 million.The deal, which closed on March 19, according to deeds first reported by Pacific Business News, comprises three parcels, including the remote northern waterfront known as Larsen’s Beach. The road to the beach was not included in the sale, and the public still has access. Zuckerberg’s other Hawaii property also fronts a public beach, but as The Daily Beast has reported, it’s accessible by a single labyrinthine road.The couple bought the property from a non-profit called Waioli Corporation, dedicated to preserving historic sites and land, which was established by the Wilcoxes, an old Hawaiian missionary family dating back to the 1840s.Known as the “Lepeuli ahupua’a,” the property houses several “reef, sea, avian, flora and historical collections in their unaltered native habitat,” according to the Waioli Corporation website."We know that this land will remain in their trusted hands and that Mark and Priscilla will act as responsible stewards of Lepeuli today and in the future,” Waioli Corp. President Sam Pratt told Pacific Business News in a statement.How to Get to Mark Zuckerberg’s Hawaii BeachBut in the past, some Hawaiians have taken issue with Zuckerberg’s stewardship. After the Facebook CEO bought his first Hawaiian estate back in 2015—a 700-acre property also on Kauai—he ran into problems with the many families who owned smaller parcels within the compound. These residents were “kamaaina families,” or Hawaiian descendants who had inherited the land without a formal deed or will.In response, Zuckerberg filed several lawsuits aimed at evicting the families by forcing them to sell their land at a public auction. He later dropped the lawsuits and apologized with an op-ed in the Island’s paper. But others later accused him of hiring a local professor named Carlos Andrade to continue the battle on his behalf, using a shell corporation owned by Zuckerberg to file separate lawsuits.Zuckerberg has denied involvement in Andrade’s lawsuits. A spokesperson told Newsweek at the time: “Mark is not suing native Hawaiians and no one has been forced off of the land. At the beginning of 2017, Mark withdrew as a plaintiff from the process to clear title on the land he purchased in Kauai.”Still, the legal saga outraged local Hawaiians and onlookers elsewhere. “This is the face of neocolonialism,” University of Hawaii professor Kapua Sproat told The Guardian at the time. A Change.org petition titled “Stop Mark Zuckerberg from Colonizing Kauai,” started last summer, has collected more than one million signatures to date.In their latest purchase, Chan and Zuckerberg have tried to underscore that they have no current plans for evictions. At present, the land is leased to a ranch called Paradise Ranch.“Waioli does essential work promoting conservation and cultural preservation and we are mindful of their legacy with regard to this land,” Chan and Zuckerberg said in a statement to Pacific Business News. “We are committed to honoring the current ranching lease to Paradise Ranch and extending the existing agricultural dedication.”Representatives for the Zuckerberg-Chans and Waioli Corp. did not immediately return The Daily Beast’s request for comment.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • Oversight agency finds `deficiencies’ in Chicago police raid

    Chicago’s civilian police oversight agency announced Thursday it has completed a 16-month investigation into a wrongful 2019 raid during which a woman was forced to stand naked and handcuffed. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability says it found nearly 100 allegations of misconduct by about a dozen officers who wrongly raided the residence of social worker Anjanette Young. According to COPA, although Young was naked when officers broke into her apartment, she was immediately handcuffed.

  • 5 people accused of shooting Lady Gaga's dog walker and stealing her pets have been arrested, LAPD says

    Lady Gaga's French bulldogs were stolen and her dog walker was shot and injured in Los Angeles in February.

  • Michael Cohen says he thinks Rudy Giuliani's legal problems will go beyond the Ukraine dealings 'because Rudy is actually a stupid guy'

    Michael Cohen told MSNBC on Thursday that he thinks Rudy Giuliani's legal problems will mount further, after the FBI raided his apartment and office.

  • Oklahoma court overturns two death sentences, citing McGirt

    The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Thursday overturned the death sentences of two more convicted killers, following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Oklahoma lacks jurisdiction for crimes on tribal reservations in which the defendants or victims are tribal citizens. The court reversed the convictions of Benjamin Robert Cole Sr., 56, and 59-year-old James Chandler Ryder. Ryder had been sentenced to death for the 1999 killing of Daisy Hallum, 70, and to life without parole for killing her son, Sam Hallum, 38, in Pittsburg County.