Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 2004

United States v. Lara

124 S. Ct. 1628 | 541 U.S. 193 | 72 U.S.L.W. 4277 | 17 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. S 219 | 158 L. Ed. 2d 420 | 2004 U.S. LEXIS 2738

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 Congress may recognize and affirm tribes’ inherent authority to prosecute nonmember Indians, making tribal and federal prosecutions separate for double-jeopardy purposes.

Background

Billy Jo Lara, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, lived on the Spirit Lake Reservation in North Dakota with his wife, a member of the Spirit Lake Tribe. After the Tribe excluded Lara from the reservation for prior misconduct, Lara returned, was stopped by federal officers, and struck one of them.

The Spirit Lake Tribal Court prosecuted Lara for “violence to a policeman.” He pleaded guilty and served 90 days. The United States then charged him under 18 U.S.C. § 111(a)(1) with assaulting a federal officer, based on substantially the same conduct. Lara argued that the second prosecution violated the Fifth Amendment’s Double Jeopardy Clause.

A federal magistrate judge rejected that argument, and an Eighth Circuit panel affirmed. Sitting en banc, however, the Eighth Circuit held that the Tribe had exercised federally delegated prosecutorial power rather than its own sovereign power. It therefore concluded that the federal prosecution was a second prosecution by the same sovereign and was barred by double jeopardy. The Supreme Court reversed.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether Congress intended the 1991 “Duro fix” to recognize inherent tribal authority, rather than delegate federal authority, to prosecute nonmember Indians.

Holding

Yes. Congress intended to recognize and affirm tribes’ inherent criminal jurisdiction over all Indians, including Indians who are not members of the prosecuting tribe.

Reasoning

The Indian Civil Rights Act defines tribal “powers of self-government” to include “the inherent power of Indian tribes, hereby recognized and affirmed, to exercise criminal jurisdiction over all Indians.” The Court read that language as affirming an existing sovereign source of tribal authority, not as transferring the Federal Government’s own prosecutorial power to tribal courts.

The legislative history reinforced the statutory text. Congressional reports and statements repeatedly described the amendment as a clarification or reaffirmation of inherent tribal authority, expressly disclaiming an intent to delegate federal jurisdiction. Thus, the Spirit Lake Tribe prosecuted Lara under claimed tribal authority, not as an agent of the Federal Government.

Issue #2

Whether the Constitution permits Congress to relax prior restrictions on tribes’ inherent authority and allow tribes to prosecute nonmember Indians.

Holding

Yes. Congress has constitutional authority to recognize and affirm this limited aspect of tribes’ inherent criminal jurisdiction.

Reasoning

Congress has long exercised broad, plenary authority in Indian affairs, traditionally grounded in the Indian Commerce Clause, the treaty power and the historical federal responsibility for relations with Indian tribes. That authority has included the power to define and alter the legal relationship between tribes and the United States.

Federal Indian policy has repeatedly changed the scope of tribal autonomy. Congress has recognized tribes, terminated and later restored tribal status, altered tribal governmental powers, conferred United States citizenship on Indians, and increased the penalties tribal courts may impose. These historical practices support Congress’s authority to adjust the bounds of tribal sovereignty.

The Court treated Duro v. Reina and related decisions as descriptions of tribal authority under then-existing treaties, statutes, and federal policy, rather than as constitutional rules permanently disabling Congress from changing the relevant legal circumstances. Duro itself invited Congress to address the jurisdictional gap that its decision had created.

The 1991 amendment made a limited change closely related to tribes’ established power to prosecute their own members and to maintain order on tribal land. The case did not require the Court to decide the outer limits of Congress’s authority to make more radical changes in tribal status, interfere with state authority, or permit tribal proceedings that independently violate due process or equal protection.

Issue #3

Whether the subsequent federal prosecution violated the Double Jeopardy Clause.

Holding

No. The Tribe and the Federal Government acted as separate sovereigns, so the dual-sovereignty doctrine permits successive prosecutions for their respective offenses.

Reasoning

Under the dual-sovereignty doctrine, a single act may constitute separate offenses when it violates the laws of two sovereigns that derive their authority to punish from distinct sources. A tribal prosecution based on inherent tribal authority is not a federal prosecution merely because Congress has recognized that authority.

Because the Spirit Lake Tribe exercised its own inherent sovereign power in prosecuting Lara, its prosecution and the later federal prosecution came from distinct sovereign sources. The Double Jeopardy Clause therefore did not bar the Federal Government from prosecuting Lara for assaulting a federal officer.

Issue #4

Whether Lara’s due process and equal protection objections to tribal prosecution of nonmember Indians required dismissal of the federal charge.

Holding

No. The Court did not decide those objections because, even if valid, they would not establish a double jeopardy violation in this federal prosecution.

Reasoning

Lara argued that tribal proceedings lack certain constitutional protections, including an indigent defendant’s Sixth Amendment right to appointed counsel, and that jurisdiction over “all Indians” raises an equal protection problem. But those arguments would at most show that the tribal prosecution was constitutionally defective or invalid.

A defect in the tribal prosecution would not transform it into an exercise of federal power. Since Lara’s double jeopardy claim depended on showing that both prosecutions derived from federal authority, the arguments could not provide relief in this case. The Court left such claims available for appropriate direct challenges to tribal proceedings, including habeas actions under 25 U.S.C. § 1303.

Concurrences

Justice Stevens

Reasoning

Justice Stevens joined the Court in full but emphasized the historical foundation of tribal sovereignty. Indian tribes governed territory in North America before the arrival of Europeans, whereas most States were never independent sovereigns and those that were held that status only briefly.

In his view, Congress may authorize States to exercise powers that constitutional doctrine otherwise restricts, such as powers otherwise barred by the dormant Commerce Clause. Given the tribes’ older and historically distinct sovereignty, he saw nothing unusual about allowing Congress to relax restrictions on an inherent tribal power.

Justice Kennedy

Reasoning

Justice Kennedy agreed that Lara’s double jeopardy claim failed because Congress unmistakably characterized the Tribe’s authority as inherent, not delegated federal power. On that statutory premise, the tribal prosecution was not a federal prosecution, and the case could be resolved without deciding the broader constitutional question.

He disagreed with the Court’s decision to hold that Congress has constitutional authority to expand inherent tribal sovereignty beyond its historical limits. In his view, Wheeler recognized inherent tribal authority chiefly over relations among a tribe’s own members, and extending criminal jurisdiction to nonmembers raises serious constitutional concerns.

Justice Kennedy stressed the Constitution’s structural protection of individual liberty. Subjecting a United States citizen to the criminal jurisdiction of a third sovereign outside the ordinary federal-and-state constitutional structure is extraordinary; the historical exception for tribes, he believed, traditionally rested on a member’s connection to and consent to his or her own tribe.

Lara did not challenge the Tribe’s authority in the tribal proceeding. Justice Kennedy therefore concluded that Lara could not use the later federal case to recast the tribal prosecution as federally delegated power for double jeopardy purposes, while reserving the underlying constitutional question for a proper case.

Justice Thomas

Reasoning

Justice Thomas concurred in the judgment because, under the Court’s existing premises, Congress’s recognition and affirmation of “inherent” tribal power changed the result of Duro. He also agreed that the statute could not plausibly be read as a delegation: delegated power and inherent power are opposites.

He added that treating the statute as a delegation of federal prosecutorial authority would create serious separation-of-powers concerns. Federal prosecutorial power is executive power, yet tribal officials are not subject to meaningful presidential appointment, removal, or supervision. A tribal prosecution based on delegated federal power could also bar a later federal prosecution without the Executive’s control over the first proceeding.

Justice Thomas questioned the coherence of the Court’s broader tribal-sovereignty doctrine. He saw tension between treating tribes as sovereigns with inherent criminal authority and recognizing Congress’s purportedly plenary authority to regulate virtually every aspect of tribal government. A sovereign, he reasoned, ordinarily does not exist at another government’s discretion.

He also disputed the Court’s asserted constitutional sources for Congress’s power to recalibrate tribal sovereignty. Neither the Indian Commerce Clause nor the Article II treaty power, in his view, plainly gives Congress a free-standing power to alter tribal sovereignty through ordinary domestic legislation.

Still, accepting Wheeler’s premise that tribes retain inherent sovereignty unless displaced by federal policy, Justice Thomas concluded that the political branches could change the federal common-law judgment expressed in Duro. Congress and the Executive had made clear through the 1991 amendment that prosecution of nonmember Indians was consistent with federal policy, so the Tribe acted as a separate sovereign.

Justice Thomas further observed that either possible reading of the statute defeated Lara’s claim. If the amendment validly restored inherent tribal authority, dual sovereignty allowed the later federal prosecution. If the amendment did nothing, the tribal court lacked jurisdiction and Lara was never placed in jeopardy in a tribunal competent to try him.

Dissents

Justice Souter

Reasoning

Justice Souter, joined by Justice Scalia, maintained that the Court’s precedents establish a constitutional limit: tribes retain inherent criminal jurisdiction over their own members, but they lack inherent criminal jurisdiction over nonmembers. Under Duro and related cases, any tribal authority over nonmember Indians can exist only by congressional delegation of federal power.

He rejected the majority’s view that Duro merely reflected changeable federal common law or then-current political policy. The distinction between independent and dependent sovereignty determines whether successive prosecutions count as prosecutions by separate sovereigns under the Double Jeopardy Clause, making the inquiry constitutional in character.

In his view, Congress may define the details of tribes’ dependent relationship to the United States, but it cannot simply declare a delegated power to be “inherent” and thereby change the constitutional consequences of dependency. Restoring genuine inherent sovereignty would require either granting tribes independence comparable to that granted to the Philippines or overruling the Court’s doctrine of dependent tribal sovereignty.

Justice Souter would nevertheless honor Congress’s practical objective of closing the jurisdictional gap identified in Duro. He would construe the statute as a delegation of federal prosecutorial authority to tribal courts over nonmember Indians, despite Congress’s use of the word “inherent.”

Because the Tribe would then have exercised delegated federal power, Justice Souter concluded that the subsequent federal prosecution arose from the same sovereign source. He would therefore hold that the Double Jeopardy Clause barred the second prosecution.