Opinion analysis: No constitutional violation from use of tribal-court convictions as predicate offenses

[Draggingtree]

Amy Howe Editor/Reporter

Posted Mon, June 13th, 2016 3:40 pm

Opinion analysis: No constitutional violation from use of tribal-court convictions as predicate offenses

In 2005, Congress enacted a new federal crime, in response to an epidemic of domestic violence against Native American women. The law makes it a felony, punishable by up to five years, to commit domestic violence in “Indian country” if the perpetrator is a repeat offender who has already has been convicted of domestic violence at least twice in federal, state, or Indian tribal courts.

 

Michael Bryant Jr., a member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, appears to be exactly the kind of serial wrongdoer Congress was targeting with the 2005 law: over a ten-year period between 1997 and 2007, he pleaded guilty on at least five occasions in tribal court to domestic violence charges, never receiving a sentence of more than a year. But after a series of assaults in 2011, Bryant was indicted by a federal grand jury as a habitual offender. Bryant tried to have the charges against him dismissed on the ground that he was not represented by a lawyer in any of the tribal-court proceedings that were being used as the basis for the federal charges. Today the U.S. Supreme Court rejected that argument, holding unanimously that, because Bryant’s tribal-court convictions were valid when they were entered, they could also be used to help convict him on federal charges without violating the Constitution

 

http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/06/opinion-analysis-no-constitutional-violation-from-use-of-tribal-court-convictions-as-predicate-offenses/