Supreme Court to Review Native American’s Conviction and Death Sentence for Murder on Indian Lands

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a federal appeals court decision vacating the conviction of Patrick Dwayne Murphy (pictured), a Native-American prisoner sentenced to death in Oklahoma state court for a murder he argues could only be prosecuted by the federal government. On May 21, 2018, the Court granted Oklahoma’s petition to review an August 2017 decision by the U.S Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit ruling that Murphy—a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation—should not have been tried in state courts because the killing occurred within the borders of the Creek Reservation, which the court found to be “Indian country.”

Under the federal Major Crimes Act, certain enumerated crimes, including murder, are subject to exclusive federal jurisdiction if committed in Indian country by or against an Indian. A unanimous three-judge panel of the appeals court sided with Murphy and Native American friend-of-the-court advocates who argued that the boundaries of the Creek Reservation—which spans eleven counties across Oklahoma, including most of Tulsa—were established in an 1866 treaty between the U.S. and the Creek Nation and that Congress has never disestablished them.

In their petition to the Court, state prosecutors challenged the circuit court’s ruling that found that the 1866 treaty between the U.S. and the Creek Nation remains intact, claiming that the decision “threatens to resurrect Oklahoma’s pre-statehood status.” Murphy’s brief opposing the State’s petition argues that, while the State of Oklahoma has long “asserted absolute criminal and civil jurisdiction” over these lands, it has done so “in defiance of Congress’s statutes, in furtherance of one of this country’s most shameful episodes of plunder and exploitation.”

The land in question in the case has long been claimed by the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Kevin Dellinger, attorney general for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, said that they “welcome the chance for the United States Supreme Court to affirm the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s sovereign territorial boundaries as established in our 1866 treaty with the United States.” The Tenth Circuit “found clear confirmation that Congress deliberately preserved the Muscogee (Creek) Nation reservation,” he said. “Unable to dispute the clear historical record and the law, the state of Oklahoma has asked the Supreme Court to read into facts that simply do not exist and/or to change the well established applicable law.”

The Supreme Court will hear argument in the case in the Fall. Justice Gorsuch, who previously served as a judge on the Tenth Circuit, took no part in the decision to review the case.