Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1978

United States v. Wheeler

435 U.S. 313 | 98 S. Ct. 1079 | 55 L. Ed. 2d 303 | 1978 U.S. LEXIS 72

Full access

Unlock the video and quiz

The written brief is free to read below. Subscribe to watch the video explainer and take the quiz.

Create an account Log in

Takeaway

In short, this case holds that a tribe's prosecution of one of its members under tribal law and a later federal prosecution arise from separate sovereign powers, so the Double Jeopardy Clause does not bar the federal case.

Background

Anthony Robert Wheeler, a Navajo Tribe member, was arrested on the Navajo Reservation after an incident involving a 15-year-old Navajo girl. He pleaded guilty in Navajo Tribal Court to disorderly conduct and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, receiving concurrent jail terms or modest fines.

More than a year later, a federal grand jury indicted Wheeler for statutory rape under the Major Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1153. The parties did not contest the lower courts' conclusion that contributing to the delinquency of a minor was a lesser included offense of the charged federal crime. Wheeler argued that the earlier tribal conviction therefore barred the federal case under the Double Jeopardy Clause.

The District Court dismissed the indictment, holding that the Navajo Tribe and the United States were not separate sovereigns. The Ninth Circuit affirmed on the same theory. The Supreme Court granted review to resolve a conflict among the circuits.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether a tribe's authority to prosecute its own members for violations of tribal law comes from retained tribal sovereignty or from a delegation of federal power.

Holding

The authority is an exercise of the tribe's retained inherent sovereignty, not delegated federal authority.

Reasoning

The dual-sovereignty inquiry turns on the ultimate source of each prosecuting authority's power, not on how extensively one government may regulate or control the other. States and the Federal Government derive their authority from separate sources; in contrast, municipalities and federal territories exercise power that originates in the state or federal sovereign that created them. For that reason, successive prosecutions by a city and a state, or by a territory and the United States, are prosecutions by one sovereign rather than two.

Indian tribes were self-governing political communities before their incorporation into the United States. Although their sovereignty is now limited, tribes retain those sovereign powers that Congress has not withdrawn by treaty or statute, or that were not necessarily lost because of their dependent status. Internal self-government, including the power to define and punish offenses committed by tribal members, is among the powers generally retained.

The Navajo Tribe had not surrendered, and Congress had not eliminated, its authority to punish members for violations of tribal law. Treaties and federal statutes recognized tribal jurisdiction over internal tribal matters, while the General Crimes Act expressly preserved tribal authority in several circumstances. Nothing in the relevant law affirmatively granted the Navajo Tribe its basic power of criminal self-government, which further showed that the power was retained rather than federally delegated.

Federal regulation of tribal institutions did not alter the source of tribal power. Congress may regulate tribal government, require approval of tribal codes, apply statutory civil-rights protections, and limit tribal punishments. But the power to regulate how a tribe exercises self-government is different from creating that power. Talton v. Mayes likewise established that a tribe's prosecution of a tribal member under tribal law is an exercise of tribal, not federal, authority.

Issue #2

Whether the Double Jeopardy Clause bars a federal prosecution under the Major Crimes Act after a tribal conviction for a lesser included tribal offense arising from the same incident.

Holding

No. Because the Navajo Tribe and the United States are separate sovereigns for this purpose, their prosecutions are not for the same offense within the meaning of the Double Jeopardy Clause.

Reasoning

Under the dual-sovereignty doctrine, a single act may violate the laws of two separate sovereigns and thus constitute two distinct offenses. The Double Jeopardy Clause prohibits being twice put in jeopardy for the same offense, and an offense is a violation of a particular sovereign's law. Since the tribal prosecution rested on the Navajo Tribe's retained sovereignty and the federal prosecution rested on federal sovereignty, the two cases involved legally distinct offenses.

The Court rejected the argument that dual sovereignty should be confined to state-federal prosecutions. The doctrine follows from the text and meaning of 'same offence,' not from a special rule applicable only to states. A tribe remains subject to Congress's plenary authority, but that fact does not make its retained power to govern its members an exercise of federal power, just as constitutional limits on states do not make state criminal authority federal authority.

Practical considerations also supported the result. Tribal courts were then limited to sentences of no more than six months' imprisonment or a $500 fine, while federal law authorized substantially greater punishment for major crimes in Indian country. Treating a tribal prosecution for a lesser offense as a bar to federal prosecution could encourage defendants to seek tribal adjudication first and could frustrate substantial federal interests in prosecuting major offenses.

The result also preserves tribal self-government. Tribal communities have an independent interest in maintaining order among members and in enforcing laws and procedures shaped by their own customs and traditions. Eliminating tribal authority merely to avoid successive prosecutions would significantly diminish that self-governing role.