Court Opinion

ID: 9781857
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 17:34:10.825582+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:40.672317
License: Public Domain

BOSSON, Chief Judge (dissenting). {26} I respectfully dissent. I agree with the majority that the trial court applied the appropriate standard on remand in light of the United States Supreme Court’s intervening opinion in Alaska v. Native Village of Venetie Tribal Gov’t, 522 U.S. 520, 118 S.Ct. 948, 140 L.Ed.2d 30 (1998). But unlike the majority, I also believe the court correctly interpreted Venetie. {27} I conclude that the trial court properly applied its holding to the facts of this case, and then rightly upheld the state’s jurisdiction to prosecute Mr. Frank. In my judgment, the majority opinion portends an undesirable turn in the development of New Mexico law regarding state and tribal jurisdictional conflicts. Because it only adds to the confusion surrounding the state’s criminal jurisdiction to prosecute felonies in a sizeable area of our state, I feel compelled to spell out my differences and suggest a solution. {28} First, the confusion. After a fair reading of the majority opinion, I am at a loss as to just what it is that Judge Rich is supposed to do and how he is supposed to do it. Some might conclude he is to perform a kind of sociological expedition in search of a “community of reference.” It is certain that he is to cast a wide net, expanding far beyond the accident site and the immediately surrounding area. Somehow, the judge is to define that community, not based on objective facts like ownership of land, but by using ambiguous topics to interpret people’s lives, their life-styles, their “cohesiveness,” their relationship to governments, and their sense of self. In theory such a task might not exceed a judge’s grasp; our courts often decide complex matters. But that is not the point. The majority creates a jurisdictional threshold that prosecutors must overcome just to get into court, much less obtain a verdict. {29} New Mexico has a legitimate, sovereign interest in prosecuting serious felonies committed within its borders and outside tribal lands. The tribes have a similar interest. If state prosecutors and courts must conduct such a fact-intensive investigation even before the state knows whether it has the right to prosecute, the implications are obvious. In the present ease that investigation has evolved into a trial within a trial that has now consumed five years and counting. It is but a small step to foresee the day when overburdened, pragmatic state officials will put such crimes to one side in favor of other, more manageable matters. A serious crime like vehicular manslaughter, with its six victims, goes to the heart of the state’s law enforcement responsibilities. Yet we make that public duty, and the trust bestowed by the people, all the more elusive when we require the state to shoulder the burdens imposed by this opinion. {30} Fifteen years ago while on this Court, then-judge Minzner wrote in a similar context: “While it is not possible in New Mexico to avoid occasional jurisdictional confusion and competition, the result sought by the state would exacerbate the present difficulties. If an extensive factual inquiry [into community] is necessary to make a jurisdictional determination, criminal trials will be delayed____ [W]e would encourage a more extensive pattern of ‘checkerboard jurisdiction.’ This result is inconsistent with Congressional intent.” State v. Ortiz, 105 N.M. 308, 312, 731 P.2d 1352, 1356 (Ct.App.1986) (citations omitted). The Ortiz court rejected a community-based claim by the state that would have expanded state jurisdiction by circumscribing the definition of Indian country. The same should hold true when a defendant invites us to expand the definition of Indian country by using an ambiguous community-based approach. {31} New Mexico should be waiy of burdening its criminal justice system, unless we are somehow required to do so by virtue of federal statute, judicial decision, or some other expression of sound public policy. After all, anyone generally familiar with Indian law must concede that the state is but one player in a script written largely by others. The majority would persuade us that Mr. Frank’s case is just such an instance, but I do not agree. {32} As separate, sovereign, and independent governmental entities, tribes and states each are entrusted with areas of primary jurisdiction over law enforcement. As neighbors and fellow citizens, tribes and states inevitably overlap to some degree in their jurisdictional claims. Whenever possible, those conflicts should be worked out by the political branches of their respective governments through a process of negotiation based on mutual respect. {33} As a practical matter, that may be what occurred at the accident site on Highway 44. When the tribal police officer first arrived on the scene, he promptly invited state and local police officers to assume primary responsibility over the investigation; the officer chose not to refer the matter to tribal law enforcement. The trial court also found as a fact in this case that, in this particular area of State Highway 44, state and local police officers traditionally undertake primary law enforcement responsibility, not the Navajo Nation. I suggest that this kind of ad hoc allocation of jurisdictional responsibilities, a consensual undertaking by knowledgeable people on the ground, should be given more respect and deference than the majority demonstrates in its opinion. {34} I also note that the Navajo Nation has not sought to intervene or otherwise appear as an interested party in this endless saga. The reason may lie in the federal Major Crimes Act under which the tribe is deprived (unjustly in my view) of jurisdiction to prosecute important felonies like manslaughter in tribal court. Thus, Mr. Frank’s crime would be referred, if at all, to the United States Attorney for prosecution in federal court. See 18 U.S.C. § 1153 (1994). {35} The public policy issue presented in this appeal is not the state versus the tribe. Instead, it is just a choice between the state prosecutor or the federal prosecutor, and a state or federal venue. As evidence of the lack of federal interest in assuming jurisdiction, one need only recall that this is the same beleaguered United States Attorney’s Office that regularly sluffs off to state district attorneys the job of prosecuting federal drug crimes. And we should be mindful that the provocateur of this conflict is not the tribe, but a skillful defense attorney hoping to avoid prosecution by playing off the jurisdictional aspirations of each against the other. Cf. United States v. Roberts, 185 F.3d 1125 (10th Cir.1999) (defendant arguing that the crime did not occur in Indian country and therefore could only be prosecuted in state court). Thus, strictly from a policy point of view, it does not appear to me that legitimate considerations of comity and respectful relations between state and tribe require us to interpose these obstacles in the state’s way. {36} Is it, then, federal law that dictates such a result? Not to my eye. It is true that before the Supreme Court’s recent pronouncement in Venetie, federal case law from the Tenth Circuit gave birth to the very complex analytical framework cited by the majority. See Pittsburg & Midway Coal Mining Co. v. Watchman, 52 F.3d 1531 (10th Cir.1995). The first opinion in State v. Frank, 1997-NMCA-093, 123 N.M. 734, 945 P.2d 464, written before Venetie, closely followed Watchman. I would observe that Watchman was not a criminal case; it did not implicate the same competing interests between state and tribe, much less their intensity, that are inherent in matters of criminal justice. Most important, whether or not Watchman was an appropriate model for the original Frank opinion, Venetie has rendered it mostly irrelevant to the criminal case before us. {37} In its 1998 opinion in Venetie, a rare unanimous decision from our nation’s highest court, the United States Supreme Court interpreted 18 U.S.C. § 1151(b)for the very first time and put its imprint on the definition of dependent Indian community as never before. Writing as a matter of first impression, the Supreme Court purposely gave a narrow reading to 18 U.S.C. § 1151(b). A dependent Indian community, said the Court, “refers to a limited category of Indian lands that are neither reservations nor allotments and that satisfy two requirements.” Venetie, 522 U.S. at 527, 118 S.Ct. 948. First, the land in question must have been “set aside” by the federal government “for the use of the Indians as Indian land.” Id. Second, the land must be under federal superintendence. See id. {38} Note the emphasis on land. To determine jurisdiction, the Supreme Court, not surprisingly, directs our attention to land and its title and away from the more nebulous issue of community eohesiveness. See id. at 531-32 n. 7, 118 S.Ct. 948. Jurisdiction is, after all, largely a question of territory. The Supreme Court emphasized that the federal set-aside is essential to “ensure[ ] that the land in question is occupied by an ‘Indian community.’” Id. at 531, 118 S.Ct. 948. In other words, we look first to the land and its title. If, and only if, it is a federal set-aside for the use of Indians as Indian land, then we proceed to the question of community and federal superintendence. See id. at 531 n. 5, 118 S.Ct. 948 (“it is the land in question, and not merely the Indian tribe inhabiting it, that must be under the superintendence of the Federal Government.”); but see Yukon Flats Sch. Dist. v. Venetie Tribal Gov’t, 101 F.3d 1286, 1291 n. 1 (9th Cir.1996) (“ ‘it is not land but Indians which must be under the superintendence of the federal government’ ”), overruled by Alaska, 522 U.S. 520, 118 S.Ct. 948, 140 L.Ed.2d 30. {39} We do not, as the present majority opinion implies, go first in search of a community, and then investigate the land. The majority has it backwards. Without a federal set-aside, it does not matter who lives in the area, Indian or non-Indian, because after Venetie those inhabitants cannot satisfy the definition of a dependent Indian community without first proving a federal set-aside. This court has only recently stated as much: Venetie “shift[s] the emphasis from the inhabitants and their day-to-day relationship with the government to a land-based inquiry.” State v. Dick, 1999-NMCA-062, ¶ 10, 127 N.M. 382, 981 P.2d 796. Quoting and expressly relying upon similar statements in Dick, one federal court recently stated, ‘What is more, after Venetie III, factors other than federal set-aside and superintendence are so diminished in importance as to be practically meaningless, except perhaps to the extent that those other “extremely far removed” factors can be used to inform the analysis of the two federal requirements.” Thompson v. County of Franklin, 127 F.Supp.2d 145, 154 (N.D.N.Y.2000). {40} In this ease, the accident occurred on a state highway; the surrounding land for a mile or two in any direction is owned by the United States Bureau of Land Management and is grazed under permit by both Indian and non-Indian ranchers. The district court correctly determined that this land, the relevant point of inquiry, was not set aside for the use of Indians as Indian land, and no one disputes this basic issue. That should end the inquiry. Unless there is first a federal set-aside, we do not proceed to analysis of community. The federal set-aside threshold “ensures that the land in question is occupied by an ‘Indian community.’” Venetie, 522 U.S. at 531, 118 S.Ct. 948. {41} The majority deals with Venetie by relying instead on two recent Tenth Circuit opinions. The first opinion, Roberts, 185 F.3d 1125, is unremarkable. Far from distinguishing Venetie, the opinion in Roberts upheld federal jurisdiction to prosecute criminal activity that took place within the confines of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma on land that, although not strictly speaking a reservation, was held by the United States for the benefit of the Choctaws and them tribal members. Roberts is nothing more than a traditional application of 18 U.S.C. § 1151. Id. at 1129-37. It did not distinguish or depart from Venetie, and, if relevant at all to the present dispute, Roberts supports what Judge Rich did below. {42} The second opinion, HRI, Inc. v. E.P.A., 198 F.3d 1224 (10th Cir.2000), is more problematic, because as the majority correctly points out, it continues even after Venetie to require a community-based analysis separate from the land title analysis. But HRI is not a criminal case; HRI is another regulatory decision, a sequel to Watchman. In HRI a federal law entitled the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to assume regulatory jurisdiction over water quality affected by proposed mining in Indian country; in case of a dispute over the Indian country status of the land to be affected, EPA could take jurisdiction until the dispute was resolved. Id. at 1233. The EPA did not claim that the land in question was conclusively Indian country; it only wanted the opportunity to reach a final decision in light of the new Supreme Court decision in Venetie. See id. at 1248. Therefore, the question in HRI was only whether the land might conceivably, under any theory, fit within the definition of dependent Indian country. The Tenth Circuit held that it was possible and remanded for factual inquiry. HRI’s unique procedural context renders slender support for the categorical assertions the majority now makes in its name. {43} Nonetheless, the Tenth Circuit opinion did include troublesome musings. It implied that a mine to be located on 160 acres of private fee land, not tribal land or a federal set-aside in any sense, might be considered (the court did not decide one way or the other) part of a dependent Indian community for federal regulatory purposes. This would occur if the relevant community of reference were considered in the broader context of the local tribal chapter, a political subdivision. See id. at 1249. This is the language on which the majority relies so heavily. {44} Regardless of how such thinking might work for federal regulatory purposes, I believe it is the wrong model for New Mexico to define state jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed outside tribal boundaries. Much of the checkerboard area of northwestern New Mexico may be regarded, depending on the observer’s point of view, as within the overall ambit of a tribal chapter or a similar political subdivision. If that is now to be the limit on state jurisdiction to prosecute, then the majority opinion marks a radical shift from precedent. To my knowledge, no New Mexico appellate case has ever limited a state prosecution unless the crime was in fact committed on land that was either within tribal or pueblo boundaries, or an Indian allotment, or on land that was actually set aside for the benefit of a tribe or pueblo and its members. See Dick, 1999-NMCA-062, ¶¶ 24-27 (holding that the state did not have jurisdiction over crime committed on land held by the Bureau of Indian Affairs for the use and benefit of a discrete Indian community). Additionally, I know of no federal criminal case that agrees with the majority. Nothing requires us to adopt the Tenth Circuit’s opinion and make HRI part of the fabric of New Mexico criminal law. In my opinion, we should not do so. {45} Rather than expanding and complicating the inquiry for the trial court, I submit that Judge Rich got it quite right. He did not, as the majority suggests, focus myopically on just the site of the actual automobile collision. Judge Rich appears to have looked toward the horizon where essentially he saw nothing; just federal BLM land, the title to which most assuredly does not satisfy the threshold set-aside requirement of Venetie. Judge Rich saw no community, dependent or otherwise, and thus, he concluded that the crime did not occur within Indian country as defined by federal statute. {46} Not only was Judge Rich in step with Venetie; he was following established New Mexico precedent. In Blatchford v. Gonzales, 100 N.M. 333, 335, 670 P.2d 944, 946 (1983), the New Mexico Supreme Court, speaking through Justice Payne and in a context eerily similar to the present appeal, used much the same language to define a dependent Indian community as the United States Supreme Court would do 15 years later in Venetie. Our Supreme Court stated, “The crucial consideration, however, is whether the community or land had been set apart for use, occupancy and protection of dependent Indian peoples. This crucial factor is nothing more than an expanded concept of the original definition of a dependent Indian community ... in which the United States retained ‘title to the lands which it permits the Indians to occupy.’ ” Id. at 336, 670 P.2d at 947 (quoting United States v. McGowan, 302 U.S. 535, 539, 58 S.Ct. 286, 82 L.Ed. 410 (1938)). In Blatchford, the Court upheld the state’s authority to prosecute a crime committed within a recognized Navajo community that was located two miles from tribal boundaries. See id. at 339, 670 P.2d at 950. The community, largely populated by Navajo tribal members and most likely within the political purview of a tribal chapter, was not situated on land set aside by the federal government for tribal use. That essentially decided the matter. See Blatchford v. Sullivan, 904 F.2d 542, 548-49 (10th Cir.1990) (applying similar test to same facts and agreeing with result reached by New Mexico Supreme Court). {47} Blatchford is still good law in New Mexico. As far as I can tell, it has never been distinguished or limited by our Supreme Court. In my view, Blatchford anticipated Venetie and is part of a legal mosaic which, along with Dick, compels a different result in this case. I believe we should uphold the decision below without yet another remand. The majority holding otherwise, I respectfully dissent.