Court Opinion

ID: 9850849
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:03:36.223474+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:44.535172
License: Public Domain

BUSSEY, Judge,
dissenting:
I dissent. Even if the Creek allotment in this case were Indian Country, c.f Ex parte Nowabbi, 60 Okl.Cr. 111, 61 P.2d 1139 (1936),1 I do not believe that the defendants in this ease are entitled to any consideration for immunity from prosecution. They are Delaware Indians who leased a Creek Tribal allotment to operate a public business. The Supreme Court has determined that Indians who reside on a reservation but are not enrolled in the governing Tribe are not immune from taxation by the States. Washington v. Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation, 447 U.S. 134, 161, 100 S.Ct. 2069, 65 L.Ed.2d 10 (1980). If Indians in that situation are not immune from direct taxation by the State, I perceive no basis to consider immunity for these defendants who are not enrolled as members of the Creek Tribe. Furthermore, the State is not even trying to collect taxes from Indians. Rather, it is simply attempting to enforce its right to review records which .it may require Indians to keep, even if those Indians are immune from taxation. Ibid.
The majority holds that, “Because the charges in this case did not relate specifically to appellees’ cigarette sales to non-Indians or off-reservation Indians, and thus did not meet the United States Supreme Court prerequisite to the exercise of state tax authority over Indians on Indian land,” (emphasis added) the State lacked *711jurisdiction. Aside from the fact that the Supreme Court has not announced the “prerequisite” on which this holding turns, the defendants in this case could not have claimed immunity from prosecution in any event. The information filed in this case recited sufficient facts to state a crime under Oklahoma law, and I would reverse the decision of the District Court.

. The Oklahoma Supreme Court has disapproved and withdrawn .his case in part. State ex rel. May v. Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma, 711 P.2d 77 (Okla.1985). To the extent that Nowabbi may be construed to prevent lands in what was formerly Indian Territory which were allotted to tribes other than the Five Civilized Tribes from coming within the federal definition of Indian Country, I agree that the opinion was overly broad. However, this case involves land allotted to the Creek Tribe, which was among the Five Civilized Tribes.