Court Opinion

ID: 9715536
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:08:07.133514+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:35.559198
License: Public Domain

WOLLMAN, Justice
(concurring specially).
Although I would join in the majority opinion if the record established the facts necessary to make a determination on the merits, my reading of the record does not permit me to do so.
Defendant pleaded guilty to the offenses charged in the information; consequently, there was no challenge to the jurisdiction of the court on the grounds that the defendant was a duly enrolled member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe and that the offenses charged occurred in Indian Country. This case reaches us on a direct appeal from defendant’s conviction on his guilty plea, rather than by way of an attack on his conviction by a petition filed under the provisions of the Post-Conviction Procedure Act, SDCL 23-52. Thus we are left without any findings by the lower court on the important jurisdictional questions presented in this appeal. Although the briefs refer to a stipulation that defendant is an enrolled member of the Yankton Sioux Tribe, I have been unable to find any such stipulation in the settled record. Moreover, I find no record evidence that the places where the alleged offenses occurred were within the original boundaries of the Yankton Reservation, either on allotted or unallotted lands.
If I could take the existence of these jurisdictional facts on faith, I would agree with the holding that the offenses in question were not committed within Indian Country. To me the Act of 1894, 28 Stat. 286, expresses a congressional determination to terminate the reservation status of the portion of the reservation ceded, sold, relinquished and conveyed to the United States by the Yankton Tribe. Cf. Mattz v. Arnett, 412 U.S. 481, 93 S.Ct. 2245, 37 L.Ed. 2d 92; United States ex rel. Condon v. Erickson, 8 Cir., 478 F.2d 684.
I would affirm the conviction on the basis of the record before us.
I am authorized to say that Chief Justice BIEGELMEIER joins in this special concurrence.