Court Opinion

ID: 9515231
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 22:54:50.041792+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:06:26.473174
License: Public Domain

ZINTER, Justice
(concurring specially).
[¶ 21.] The State requests that we overrule State v. Spotted Horse, 462 N.W.2d 463 (S.D.1990) (holding that the State has no jurisdiction to pursue an Indian onto an Indian reservation for criminal offenses committed off the reservation). Spotted Horse has two underpinnings. The State does not request that we reconsider the first Spotted Horse underpinning, which overruled State v. Onihan, 427 N.W.2d 365 (S.D.1988), and held that the *490State lacked Public Law 280 “jurisdiction over highways running through the reservations.” Spotted Horse, 462 N.W.2d at 467. Instead, the State requests that we reconsider Spotted Horse’s second underpinning, which broadly held that “South Dakota had no jurisdiction on the reservation,” and therefore, hot pursuit could not -reach onto the reservation to pursue and arrest a tribal member. Id. at 468-69. As a result of this second underpinning, Spotted Horse concluded that a state officer’s arrest on the reservation is illegal (i.e. a constitutional violation), and any evidence derived from that arrest is inadmissible. The State asks us to reconsider this second underpinning of Spotted Horse solely because of language in the United States Supreme Court’s recent decision in Nevada v. Hicks, 533 U.S. 353, 121 S.Ct. 2304, 150 L.Ed.2d 398 (2001). Although I join much of the Court’s decision declining to apply Hicks to Spotted Horse, I write specially to explain my view of this case.
[¶ 22.] First, I join the Court’s analysis of Hicks insofar as it points out the legal and factual distinctions between the civil jurisdiction asserted by the tribal court over non-members in Hicks and the State’s assertion of criminal jurisdiction over a tribal member in the case at bar. Supra ¶¶ 11-14. This fundamental distinction is a significant barrier to Hicks’s application in this case.
[¶ 23.] However, having said that, I must also concede that much of the language of Justice Scalia’s opinion (see supra ¶ 14) suggests that the second underpinning of Spotted Horse was wrongly decided.5 This conclusion is hardly surprising because, even in the absence of Hicks, the other states that have considered this issue conclude that a state has criminal jurisdiction in this situation. See State ex rel. Old Elk v. District Court, 170 Mont. 208, 552 P.2d 1394, 1396 (1976) (rejecting the contention that an arrest was illegal because it was made pursuant to a state arrest warrant and was executed by a state officer on an Indian person within the boundaries of an Indian reservation); State v. Lupe, 181 Ariz. 211, 889 P.2d 4, 6 (1994), review denied (Feb. 22, 1995) (concluding that a state properly exercised jurisdiction for an offense committed outside the reservation by an Apache tribal member who was pursued into, and arrested within, the reservation).6 Therefore, I would not categorically dismiss the State’s arguments.
[¶ 24.] I must also part company with the Court’s observation that only two Justices joined Justice Scalia’s “reasoning” in Hicks. See supra ¶ 16. I disagree because three Justices explicitly concurred in *491Justice Scalia’s and Chief Justice Rehnquist’s “analysis as well as its conclusions,” Hicks, 533 U.S. at 375, 121 S.Ct. 2304 (Souter, J., concurring) (joined by Justice Kennedy and Justice Thomas). Furthermore, Justice Ginsburg concurred in the opinion. Id. at 386, 121 S.Ct. 2304 (stating “I join the Court’s opinion”). Thus, six members of the Court joined Justice Sca-lia’s language, and therefore, the State is correct that much of Hicks’s reasoning foreshadows an eventual reversal of the second underpinning of Spotted Horse.’7
[¶25.] Nevertheless, I join the Court because of the fundamental distinction between Hicks’s core issue of tribal jurisdiction over TOoiz-members and Spotted Horse’s core issue of state criminal jurisdiction over tribal members. In light of this difference, it is simply too far a stretch to now conclude that Hicks requires a reversal of the second underpinning of Spotted Horse. Furthermore, it must be recognized that this Court’s own view of this jurisdictional subject is not a model of stability. The Court’s opinion has changed the last two times the jurisdictional issue has been considered. See In re Hankins, 80 S.D. 435, 125 N.W.2d 839 (1964) (no jurisdiction); Onihan, 427 N.W.2d 365 (jurisdiction, impliedly overruled Hankins); and Spotted Horse, 462 N.W.2d 463 (no jurisdiction, overruled On-ihan). Because this Court has equivocated on the jurisdiction question in the past, it remains prudent for this Court to follow Justice O’Connor’s procedural course of following our “best source of ‘coherence in the various manifestations of the general law of [Indian jurisdiction]!.]’ ” Hicks, 533 U.S. at 388, 121 S.Ct. 2304 (quoting Atkinson Trading Co., Inc. v. Shirley, 532 U.S. 645, 121 S.Ct. 1825, 1828-29, 149 L.Ed.2d 889 (Souter, J., concurring)). This course is especially appropriate because the Supreme Court specifically declined to review this Court’s last word on the subject in Spotted Horse, 462 N.W.2d 463, cert. denied, 500 U.S. 928, 111 S.Ct. 2041, 114 L.Ed.2d 125 (1991).
[¶ 26.] Therefore, I conclude that Hicks is not sufficiently compelling today to require a reversal of course yet a third time. In the absence of a clearer directive from the Supreme Court or a different request for reconsideration, I believe that stability and predictability in the law require our adherence to Spotted Horse.

. In addition to the language noted by the majority at ¶ 14, the Supreme Court also noted:
Our cases make clear that the Indians’ right to make their own laws and be governed by them does not exclude all state regulatory authority on the reservation. State sovereignty does not end at a reservation’s border. Though tribes are often referred to as "sovereign” entities, it was "long ago” that "the Court departed from Chief Justice Marshall’s view that ‘the laws of [a State] can have no force’ within reservation boundaries.” "Ordinarily,” it is now clear, "an Indian reservation is considered part of the territory of the State.”
Hicks, 533 U.S. at 361-62, 121 S.Ct. 2304 (internal citations omitted).
[Tjribal authority to regulate state officers in executing process related to the violation, off reservation, of state laws is not essential to tribal self-government or internal relations — to "the right to make laws and be ruled by them.” The State’s interest in execution of process is considerable, and even when it relates to Indian-fee lands it no more impairs the tribe's self-government than federal enforcement of federal law impairs state government.
Id. at 364, 121 S.Ct 2304.

. As in these decisions, the record in this case reflects no extradition agreement for the misdemeanor offenses involved. Therefore, the argument of interference with reservation Government discussed in Benally v. Marcum, *49189 N.M. 463, 553 P.2d 1270 (N.M.1976), is not present here.

. I also part company with the Court’s broad conclusion that a compact between a tribe and the State is necessary before a state officer may engage in pursuit of a tribal member onto the reservation for a crime committed off the reservation. See supra ¶ 18. I do so because the United States Supreme Court’s jurisprudence clearly permits some state jurisdiction in some situations where there is no compact.