U.S. Supreme Court - June 13, 2016

by: Aalvarez • June 13, 2016 • no comments

Prior Uncounseled Tribal Court Convictions - May Be Used As Predicate Convictions

Prior uncounseled tribal court convictions can be used as predicate offenses to prosecute domestic violence cases involving Native American defendants in federal court, provided that the right-to-counsel provisions of the Indian Civil Rights Act (ICRA) were followed in the prior cases. Here, the defendant pleaded guilty to domestic violence five times throughout the years 1997 and 2007 in tribal court, never receiving more than a year. Eventually, the defendant was indicted in federal court in 2011 for new domestic violence charges and charged as a habitual offender under a federal law that provides heightened penalties for persons who commit domestic violence in "Indian country" if the defendant has prior domestic violence convictions. The defendant argued that the charges should be dismissed on the ground that he was not represented by a lawyer in any of the tribal-court hearings that were being used as the predicates for the new federal charge.

The Supreme Court disagreed, explaining that the Sixth Amendment does not apply to tribal-court proceedings and that a lawyer is only required to be appointed in trial court-proceedings if criminal defendants are sentenced to more than a year in prison. Further, the Court explained that if the defendant's tribal-court convictions were valid when they were entered, they were valid when used as the basis of the federal charges without violating his right to counsel. This is because laws that are intended to penalize repeat offenders only punish the last offense committed by the defendant, not the penalty imposed for the earlier conviction. Under that logic, here, the defendant was not being punished for the old convictions where he did not have a lawyer, he was being punished for the assault that occurred in 2011, where he was represented by a lawyer. United States v. Bryant