U.S. v. Lara, 01-3695.

• Citation: 324 F.3d 635
• Decision Date: 24 March 2003
• Docket Number: No. 01-3695.,01-3695.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Billy Jo LARA, also known as Billy Joe Lara, Appellant.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (8th Circuit)

324 F.3d 635

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Billy Jo LARA, also known as Billy Joe Lara, Appellant.

No. 01-3695.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: September 11, 2002.

Filed: March 24, 2003.

Alexander F. Reichart, argued, Grand Fork, ND, for appellant.

Richard A. Friedman, argued, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, DC, for appellee.

Before HANSEN, Chief Judge, McMILLIAN, BOWMAN, WOLLMAN, LOKEN, MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, MURPHY, BYE, RILEY, MELLOY, and SMITH, Circuit Judges, En Banc.

WOLLMAN, Circuit Judge.

After a Spirit Lake Nation Reservation tribal court convicted him of assaulting a police officer, Billy Jo Lara was indicted by the federal government for assault on a federal officer in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 111(a)(1). Lara moved to dismiss the indictment on double jeopardy and selective prosecution grounds. Following the district court's denial of the motion, Lara entered a conditional plea of guilty to the indictment, reserving his right to appeal the denial of his motion to dismiss. A panel of this court affirmed, holding that because the power of the Spirit Lake Nation derives from its retained sovereignty and not from Congressionally delegated authority, Lara's conviction on the federal charge did not run afoul of the Double Jeopardy Clause. We granted Lara's petition for rehearing en banc, vacating the panel's opinion and judgment. We now reverse.

I.

While on the Spirit Lake Nation Reservation on June 13, 2001, Lara was arrested for public intoxication by Bureau of Indian Affairs police officers. The officers informed Lara, who is not a member of the Spirit Lake Nation, of an exclusion order prohibiting him from entering the reservation. Upon hearing of the exclusion order, Lara struck one of the officers with his fist. Lara was charged with five violations of Spirit Lake Tribal Code: violence to a policeman, resisting lawful arrest, public intoxication, disobedience to a lawful order of the tribal court, and trespassing. On June 15, Lara pled guilty to the first three charged offenses and was sentenced to a jail term of 155 days. On August 29, a federal grand jury returned an indictment charging Lara with assault on a federal officer in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 111(a)(1). After consenting to proceed before a United States Magistrate Judge, Lara moved to dismiss the indictment on double jeopardy and selective prosecution grounds or, in the alternative, that discovery be allowed on the claim of selective prosecution. As recounted above, the magistrate judge denied the motions, and Lara entered a plea of guilty conditioned on his right to seek appellate review of his motion to dismiss the indictment.

II.

We review de novo the denial of a motion to dismiss on double jeopardy grounds. United States v. Alverez, 235 F.3d 1086, 1089-90 (8th Cir.2000). The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment provides that no person shall "be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb." The right to be free from multiple prosecutions is limited by the dual sovereignty doctrine, which permits an independent sovereign to prosecute an individual who has been prosecuted by another sovereign for the same act. One who violates the laws of two independent sovereigns commits an offense against each, and thus a second prosecution is not for "the same offence." Heath v. Alabama, 474 U.S. 82, 88, 106 S.Ct. 433, 88 L.Ed.2d 387 (1985).

The application of the dual sovereignty doctrine "turns on whether the two entities draw their authority to punish the offender from distinct sources of power." Id. The Double Jeopardy Clause does not permit successive prosecutions under the dual sovereignty doctrine where the authority for the prosecution derives from the same sovereign source. See, e.g., Waller v. Florida, 397 U.S. 387, 393-95, 90 S.Ct. 1184, 25 L.Ed.2d 435 (1970) (a city and its parent state); Puerto Rico v. Shell Co., 302 U.S. 253, 264-66, 58 S.Ct. 167, 82 L.Ed. 235 (1937) (the federal government and a territorial government); United States v. Mills, 964 F.2d 1186, 1193 (D.C.Cir.1992) (en banc) (the federal government and the District of Columbia). Conversely, the dual sovereignty doctrine permits a state to prosecute a defendant who has previously been prosecuted for the same act by another state or the federal government. Heath, 474 U.S. at 93, 106 S.Ct. 433 (two states); Bartkus v. Illinois, 359 U.S. 121, 139, 79 S.Ct. 676, 3 L.Ed.2d 684 (1959) (upholding state prosecution following federal prosecution); United States v. Williams, 104 F.3d 213, 216 (8th Cir.1997) (upholding federal prosecution following state prosecution). Consequently, whether the dual sovereignty doctrine applies to Lara's double jeopardy challenge turns on whether the Spirit Lake Nation exercised sovereign authority emanating from a sovereign source distinct from that of the overriding federal sovereign.

In Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 435 U.S. 191, 98 S.Ct. 1011, 55 L.Ed.2d 209 (1978), the Supreme Court held that a tribe had no inherent power to prosecute non-Indian residents of its reservation. "By submitting to the overriding sovereignty of the United States, Indian tribes therefore necessarily give up their power to try non-Indian citizens of the United States except in a manner acceptable to Congress." Id. at 210, 98 S.Ct. 1011. In United States v. Wheeler, the defendant raised a double jeopardy challenge to a federal prosecution commenced after Wheeler, an enrolled member of the tribe, had been convicted in tribal court on a lesser included offense. 435 U.S. 313, 315-16, 98 S.Ct. 1079, 55 L.Ed.2d 303 (1978). Wheeler argued that because Congress has plenary authority to abrogate tribal sovereignty, the tribe was in effect an arm of the federal government. Id. at 319, 98 S.Ct. 1079. The Court explained that its dual sovereignty precedents did not turn on the extent of control one sovereign had over another, but whether the two prosecutions exercised authority derived from the same ultimate source of power. Id. at 319-20, 98 S.Ct. 1079. The Court held that among the "unique and limited" sovereign powers retained by the tribe was the power to punish "members of the Tribe for violations of tribal law." Id. at 323-24, 98 S.Ct. 1079. The distinction expressly and repeatedly drawn by the Court was not premised on the racial status of the defendant but on his membership status. Although tribes retained authority over their internal affairs, they had been implicitly or explicitly divested of authority over nonmembers. Id. at 324-25. 98 S.Ct. 1079. "The areas in which such implicit divestiture of sovereignty has been held to have occurred are those involving the relations between an Indian tribe and nonmembers of the tribe." Id. at 326, 98 S.Ct. 1079. Because Wheeler was an enrolled member of the tribe, he was prosecuted pursuant to an inherent sovereign power that had never been divested from the tribe, and thus subsequent federal prosecution for the same act was not barred. Id. at 332, 98 S.Ct. 1079.

In Montana v. United States, 450 U.S. 544, 101 S.Ct. 1245, 67 L.Ed.2d 493 (1981), the Court again emphasized the distinction between the retained or inherent sovereignty over internal relations between members of the tribe and the sovereignty over external relations that necessarily had been divested from the tribes. "[T]he dependent status of Indian tribes within our territorial jurisdiction is necessarily inconsistent with their freedom independently to determine their external relations." Id. at 564, 101 S.Ct. 1245 (quoting Wheeler, 435 U.S. at 326, 98 S.Ct. 1079, emphasis added by Montana Court). The Court held that the tribe's retained inherent sovereignty did not authorize it to regulate hunting and fishing by nonmembers on reservation land owned in fee by nonmembers. Id. at 564-65, 101 S.Ct. 1245.

The question of what power a tribe has over nonmember Indians was addressed in Duro v. Reina, 495 U.S. 676, 110 S.Ct. 2053, 109 L.Ed.2d 693 (1990). Duro, an enrolled member of a different tribe, was charged in Pima-Maricopa Indian Community Court with unlawful firing of a weapon, a misdemeanor, in connection with the death of an Indian boy. Id. at 679-81, 110 S.Ct. 2053. His motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction was denied. Id. at 681-82, 110 S.Ct. 2053. Because the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community did not claim that its jurisdiction over Dura stemmed from Congressionally delegated authority, the Court was faced with the question whether the tribe's retained or inherent sovereignty provided it with jurisdiction over a nonmember Indian. The Court held that it did not. Id. at 688 ("In the area of criminal enforcement, however, tribal power does not extend beyond internal relations among members.").

In response to the decision in Duro, Congress amended the Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA), 25 U.S.C. § 1301, by revising the definition of "powers of self-government" to include "the inherent power of Indian tribes, hereby recognized and affirmed, to exercise criminal jurisdiction over all Indians." 25 U.S.C. § 1301(2). The amendment also defined "Indian" to include all Indians subject to federal jurisdiction under the Indian Major Crimes Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1153. 25 U.S.C. § 1301(4). Thus, under the ICRA amendments, Indians who are enrolled members of a federally recognized tribe are subject to the jurisdiction of all tribes.

Although the Supreme Court has not yet construed the post-Duro ICRA amendments, it has repeatedly reaffirmed its holdings limiting tribal sovereign authority to tribe members. Atkinson Trading Co. v. Shirley, 532 U.S. 645, 121 S.Ct. 1825, 149 L.Ed.2d 889 (2001) (rejecting under the Montana test the imposition of a hotel occupancy tax on nonmember-owned reservation hotel on non-Indian fee land); Nevada v. Hicks, 533 U.S. 353, 358-59, 121 S.Ct. 2304, 150 L.Ed.2d 398 (2001) (citing Oliphant for the general rule that "the inherent sovereign powers of...