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Page Number: 5.0

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OKLAHOMA v. CASTRO-HUERTA 

Opinion of the Court 

cockroaches. 

When  questioned,  Castro-Huerta  admitted  that  he  had 
severely undernourished his stepdaughter during the pre-
ceding month.  The State of Oklahoma criminally charged 
both  Castro-Huerta  and  his  wife  for  child  neglect.    Both 
were convicted.  Castro-Huerta was sentenced to 35 years
of imprisonment, with the possibility of parole.  This case 
concerns the State’s prosecution of Castro-Huerta. 

After Castro-Huerta was convicted and while his appeal 
was  pending  in  state  court,  this  Court  decided  McGirt  v. 
Oklahoma, 591 U. S. ___ (2020).  In McGirt, the Court held 
that Congress had never properly disestablished the Creek 
Nation’s reservation in eastern Oklahoma.  As a result, the 
Court concluded that the Creek Reservation remained “In-
dian country.”  Id., at ___–___, ___, ___ (slip op., at 1–3, 17, 
28).  The status of that part of Oklahoma as Indian country 
meant that different jurisdictional rules might apply for the 
prosecution  of  criminal  offenses  in  that  area.    See  18 
U. S. C.  §§1151–1153.    Based  on  McGirt’s  reasoning,  the 
Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals later recognized that
several  other  Indian  reservations  in  Oklahoma  had  like-
wise  never  been  properly  disestablished.  See,  e.g.,  State 
ex rel. Matloff v.  Wallace, 2021  OK CR 21, ¶15, 497 P. 3d 
686, 689 (reaffirming recognition of the Cherokee, Choctaw,
and  Chickasaw  Reservations);  Grayson  v.  State,  2021  OK 
CR 8, ¶10, 485 P. 3d 250, 254 (Seminole Reservation). 

In  light  of  McGirt  and  the  follow-on  cases,  the  eastern 
part of Oklahoma, including Tulsa, is now recognized as In-
dian country.  About two million people live there, and the 
vast majority are not Indians. 

The classification of eastern Oklahoma as Indian country 
has  raised  urgent  questions  about  which  government  or
governments have jurisdiction to prosecute crimes commit-
ted there.  This case is an example:  a crime committed in 
what is now recognized as Indian country (Tulsa) by a non-