Attorney general says reservation dispute causing crisis in Ottawa County

Warning that Ottawa County is facing a public safety crisis, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond is urging a state appeals court to decide quickly whether two tribal reservations still exist so prosecutors can sort out criminal jurisdiction.

State prosecutors have been blocked from pursuing charges against Native Americans in some pockets of the county because of conflicting claims about reservation status, and federal prosecutors have refrained from filing charges because of the uncertainty, Drummond told the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Monday.

“As such, because of decisions by the Ottawa County District Court, federal prosecutors’ unwillingness to exercise jurisdiction based on decisions by state trial courts, and uncertainty surrounding jurisdictional boundaries within the county, Ottawa County is suffering from a dangerous gap in criminal justice enforcement,” Drummond told the court.

More: Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond seeks to drop McGirt-related case pushed by O'Connor

The attorney general filed motions in four different cases currently before the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals asking the judges to expedite their rulings. The cases involve crimes involving Native American defendants that occurred on the historical Ottawa reservation and the reservation created for the Miami and Peoria tribes. The central question in the cases is whether the reservations still exist. The same question is at issue in federal lawsuits filed by the tribes.

Under federal law, crimes occurring on reservations in which the accused is a Native American must be prosecuted in federal or tribal courts.

Cases being dismissed while Ottawa County's status remains unclear, AG says

Since the 2020 ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma — in which the U.S. Supreme Court found the Muscogee (Creek) reservation was never disestablished — the process for reviewing other tribes’ reservation claims has generally been orderly. As in the McGirt case, a state criminal case would be challenged on the basis that it occurred within a reservation and outside the state’s jurisdiction, and the state continued to prosecute cases while a decision about the status of a particular reservation was pending. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has affirmed some reservations and rejected others.

More: Oklahoma court dismisses case to narrow McGirt ruling

However, in Ottawa County, in northeastern Oklahoma, the state has abandoned some cases before an appeals court has weighed in. Drummond told the appeals court Monday that the district attorney’s office or district court judges have dismissed more than 50 “serious felony and misdemeanor” charges this year and transferred them to tribal authorities while the reservation status is still under court review.

Drummond sent a letter to Ottawa County District Attorney Doug Pewitt last month telling him that he “can and must” exercise Oklahoma’s jurisdiction while the court cases are pending.

“The state must exercise its presumptive jurisdiction to protect the citizens of Oklahoma, native and non-native alike, unless and until a final decision from the OCCA (Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals), the United States Court of Appeals or the United States Supreme Court tells us otherwise,” Drummond told Pewitt.

Drummond said in the letter that his office was initiating appeals of cases being dismissed and would file an extraordinary writ if judges kept dismissing other cases.

Pewitt did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday, and a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Northern District of Oklahoma, did not respond to a request for information about its approach to prosecutions on the contested reservations.

It is not clear how close the Oklahoma Court of Appeals may be to deciding the reservation cases. In all four, the last briefs were filed more than a year ago.

At Drummond’s urging, the court last month dismissed a case in which the status of the Eastern Shawnee reservation was at issue. Drummond said in that case ambiguities about the land on which the crimes were committed complicated the analysis.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma AG urges court to resolve 'dangerous' McGirt-related gap