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alp227

(32,054 posts)
Sun Mar 10, 2013, 09:20 PM Mar 2013

US v. Lara - recent Wikipedia frontpage featured article w/implications about VAWA/tribes

Republicans were holding up the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act due to the new provisions allowing Native American tribes to prosecute non-tribal members who commit rape on tribal lands. Recently Wikipedia featured on its front page this article about the 2004 US Supreme Court case United States v. Lara:

United States v. Lara, 541 U.S. 193 (2004), was a United States Supreme Court case which held that both the United States and a Native American (Indian) tribe could prosecute an Indian for the same acts that constituted crimes in both jurisdictions. The Court held that the United States and the tribe were separate sovereigns; therefore, separate tribal and federal prosecutions did not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause.[1]

In the 1880s, Congress passed the Major Crimes Act, divesting tribes of criminal jurisdiction in regard to several felony crimes. In 1990, the Supreme Court ruled in Duro v. Reina that an Indian tribe did not have the authority to try an Indian criminally who was not a member of that tribe. The following year, Congress passed a law that stated that Indian tribes, because of their inherent sovereignty, had the authority to try non-member Indians for crimes committed within the tribe's territorial jurisdiction.

The defendant, Billy Jo Lara, was charged for acts that were criminal offenses under both the Spirit Lake Sioux Tribe's laws and the federal United States Code. Lara pleaded guilty to the tribal charges, but claimed double jeopardy against the federal charges. The Supreme Court ruled that double jeopardy did not apply to Lara since "the successive prosecutions were brought by separate and distinct sovereign bodies".


Based on reading this part alone, one would see it's a waste of money to even CHALLENGE those new VAWA provisions in court.
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