Opinion ID: 3065307
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Criminal v. Civil Action

Text: I disagree with the majority’s view that ICRA provides a federal court with jurisdiction to review only a tribal criminal proceeding, not a civil proceeding. The plain language of § 1303 does not limit the court’s habeas jurisdiction to criminal proceedings. Section 1303 simply provides, “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall be available to any person, in a court of the United States, to test the legality of his detention by order of an Indian tribe.” In other contexts, the writ of habeas corpus has historically been available to contest detention resulting from civil proceedings. See, e.g., Rex v. Clarkson, 1 Strange 444 (K.B. 1720); Gegiow v. Uhl, 239 U.S. 3 (1915). The Supreme Court has held more recently that nothing in the language of the provisions for federal habeas relief for a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a state court “requires that the state court judgment pursuant to which a person is in custody be a criminal conviction.” Duncan v. Walker, 533 U.S. 167, 176 (2001). As examples, the Court cited cases in which federal courts had applied federal habeas review to petitions brought “to challenge the legality of a state court order of civil commitment or a state court order of civil contempt.” Id. (citations omitted). No reason appears in the plain language of § 1303 to give it a narrower “reach than [the] cognate statutory provisions governing collateral review of state and federal action[s].” Poodry v. Tonawanda Band of Seneca Indians, 85 F.3d 874, 879-80 (2d Cir. 1996), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 1041 (1996). JEFFREDO v. MACARRO 16719 The majority relies primarily on Santa Clara Pueblo to support its conclusion. In that case, a female member of the Santa Clara Pueblo Indian tribe and her daughter brought suit in federal court against the tribe and its governor seeking declaratory and injunctive relief against enforcement of a tribal ordinance denying membership in the tribe to children of female members who marry outside the tribe, while extending membership to children of male members who marry outside the tribe. The issue before the Supreme Court in Santa Clara was whether ICRA could be “interpreted to impliedly authorize” the “bringing of civil actions for declaratory or injunctive relief to enforce its substantive provisions.” Santa Clara, 436 U.S. at 51-52. The Court held that it could not. The Court stated that its holding was “strongly reinforced by the specific legislative history underlying 25 U.S.C. § 1303.” Id. at 66. As part of its discussion of the legislative history, the Court explained that Congress had considered and rejected two proposals that would have allowed for “federal review of alleged violations of the Act arising in a civil context.” Id. at 67. One of these proposals would have required the Attorney General to prosecute deprivations of an Indian’s statutory or constitutional rights and the other would have authorized the Department of the Interior to adjudicate civil complaints concerning tribal actions. Id. at 67-68. While Congress rejected these two particular proposals, the legislative history does not indicate that it rejected any possible review of civil proceedings, and the Court did not so find. The Court also noted, “In settling on habeas corpus as the exclusive means for federal-court review of tribal criminal proceedings, Congress opted for a less intrusive mechanism than had been initially proposed.” Id. at 67. (The initial proposal to which the Court referred here would have allowed for de novo review in federal court of all convictions in tribal courts.) From the premise that habeas corpus is the exclusive 16720 JEFFREDO v. MACARRO means for review of criminal proceedings, it does not follow as a matter of logic or grammar that habeas corpus is a means that can be used to review criminal proceedings exclusively. In other words, the Court’s statement does not preclude habeas review of civil proceedings that result in detention. The Court held only that habeas corpus, and not any other federal remedy such as a direct appeal, is provided by ICRA. The Court had no need to, and did not, decide that habeas jurisdiction under ICRA applied only to criminal proceedings. Such is the Second Circuit’s interpretation of the case: “Santa Clara Pueblo obviously does not speak directly to the scope of Title I’s habeas provision, which was a matter not raised in that case.” Poodry, 85 F.3d at 887. In Poodry, the Second Circuit also found that “it is not possible to draw from [ICRA’s] legislative history a definitive conclusion as to whether Congress intended that habeas review be restricted to criminal convictions, or whether other circumstances of ‘detention’ by a tribal court order could trigger habeas review.” Id. at 888. The fact that the challenged proceedings in the case before us were civil, not criminal, does not, in my view, bar the district court from hearing the matter under § 1303.