Source: http://openjurist.org/368/us/351/seymour-v-superintendent-of-washington-state-penitentiary
Timestamp: 2015-11-26 12:58:11
Document Index: 768738908

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1151', '§ 1151', '§ 1153', '§ 1153', '§ 1151', '§ 1151']

368 US 351 Seymour v. Superintendent of Washington State Penitentiary | OpenJurist
368 U.S. 351 - Seymour v. Superintendent of Washington State Penitentiary Homethe United States Reports368 U.S.
368 US 351 Seymour v. Superintendent of Washington State Penitentiary 368 U.S. 351
82 S.Ct. 424
7 L.Ed.2d 346
Paul SEYMOUR, Petitioner,v.SUPERINTENDENT OF WASHINGTON STATE PENITENTIARY.
Argued Dec. 13, 1961.
Decided Jan. 15, 1962.
Glen A. Wilkinson, Washington, D.C., for petitioner. Claron C. Spencer was with him on the briefs.
Stephen C. Way, Olympia, Wash., for respondent.
The petitioner Paul Seymour was charged with burglary by the State of Washington in the Superior Court of Okanogan County and pleaded guilty to the lesser included offense of attempted burglary. Upon this plea he was convicted and sentenced to serve seven and one-half years in the state penitentiary. Later, he commenced this proceeding by filing a petition for writ of habeas corpus in the State Supreme Court urging that his state conviction was void for want of jurisdiction on the grounds that he was an enrolled, unemancipated member of the Colville Indian Tribe and therefore a ward of the United States; that the 'purported crime' of burglary for which he had been convicted was committed in 'Indian country' as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 1151, 18 U.S.C.A. § 1151;1 and that burglary committed by an Indian in Indian country is an offense 'within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States' under 18 U.S.C. § 1153, 18 U.S.C.A. § 1153.2 Since the petition, return and answer raised issues of fact, the State Supreme Court referred the matter to the original trial court to determine (1) whether petitioner was a member of the Colville Tribe, and (2) whether the offense was committed in Indian country. After hearings, the trial court upheld petitioner's claim of membership in the Colville Tribe, but rejected his contention that the burglary upon which the state conviction was based had occurred in Indian country.
The trial court's conclusion that the crime did not take place in Indian country was not based upon any factual doubt as to the precise place where the burglary occurred for that fact was undisputed. Nor did that conclusion rest upon any uncertainty as to the proper definition of the term 'Indian country' for the court expressly recognized the applicability of § 1151 which defines the term to include 'all land within the limits of any Indian reservation under the jurisdiction of the United States Government, notwithstanding the issuance of any patent, and, including rights-of-way running through the reservation * * *.' Rather, the trial court's conclusion rested solely upon its holding that, although the land upon which the burglary occurred had once been within the limits of an Indian reservation, that reservation had since been dissolved and the land in question restored to the public domain.
Agreeing with the trial court, the State Supreme Court then denied the petition for habeas corpus,3 holding as it previously had in State ex rel. Best v. Superior Court,4 that 'What is still known as the south half of the diminished Colville Indian reservation is no longer an Indian reservation.' Since the question of whether the place where the crime occurred is a part of an Indian reservation and therefore Indian country within the meaning of §§ 1151 and 1153 depends upon the interpretation and application of federal law, and since the resolution of that question as presented in this case raises issues of importance pertaining to this country's relationship to its Indian wards, we granted certiorari.5
The case turns upon the current status of the Colville Indian Reservation—a reservation created in 1872 by Executive Order of President Grant which declared that 'the country bounded on the east and south by the Columbia River, on the west by the Okanagan River, and on the north by the British possessions, be, and the same is hereby, set apart as a reservation for' the Colville Indians.6 In 1892, the size of this reservation was diminished when Congress passed an Act providing that, subject to reservations and allotments made to individual Colville Indians, about one-half of the original Colville rese