Court Opinion

ID: 9793677
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 02:51:25.353984+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:06:34.026748
License: Public Domain

ROSSMAN, J.,
specially concurring.
I. agree that defendant’s conviction should be affirmed. I do not, however, agree with significant portions of the majority’s reasoning and therefore write separately. Defendant caught fish during a closed season1 under a Warm Springs tribal permit which allowed him to catch fish only for ceremonial purposes and to sell them only to the tribes. He violated the terms of the permit by selling the fish commercially. He thereby violated ORS 509.011, unless some tribal right protects him from state prosecution.2 Because his actions were beyond the authority which the tribal permit granted, he has no tribal immunity. He is therefore subject to state law. That is where this case should end. The existence of a conservation necessity, which is the focus of the majority opinion, is simply irrelevant. State v. Gowdy, 1 Or App 424, 462 P2d 461 (1969).
The majority, relying in part on United States v. Sohappy, 770 F2d 816 (9th Cir 1985), assumes that the state must show a conservation necessity for the closure of the season in order to justify its prosecution of defendant. It then *185strains to find proof of such a necessity in the record of this case. In doing so, it compounds the Ninth Circuit’s apparent misunderstanding of the relevant Supreme Court cases. Those cases do not protect from state prosecution tribal members who hunt or fish in violation of tribal regulations.
Many Indian tribes have reserved hunting and fishing rights which are protected in treaties and other federal agreements or enactments. The tribes and their members are, in almost all circumstances, immune from state regulation in exercising those rights. See Antoine v. United States, 420 US 194, 204, 95 S Ct 944, 43 L Ed 2d 129 (1975). The only exception so far recognized is that a state may override Indian off-reservation (and possibly on-reservation) rights if there is a conservation necessity for it to do so. See New Mexico v. Mescalero Apache Tribe, 462 US 324, 103 S Ct 2378, 76 L Ed 2d 611 (1983); Puyallup Tribe v. Washington Game Dept., 433 US 165, 97 S Ct 2616, 53 L Ed 2d 667 (1977); Antoine v. United States, supra, 420 US at 207; see also Washington Game Dept. v. Puyallup Tribe, 414 US 44, 49, 94 S Ct 330, 38 L Ed 2d 254 (1973) (“[T]he Treaty does not give the Indians a federal right to pursue the last living steelhead until it enters their nets.”)
Those cases, like other Supreme Court cases in which state regulation of Indian fishing or hunting was relevant to the decision, involved fishing or hunting which was legal under tribal law. The question the Court faced was, therefore, whether the state could prohibit Indian fishing and hunting in the face of the tribe’s action permitting it. See, e.g., Puyallup Tribe v. Washington Game Dept., supra; see also State v. Reed, 92 Wash 2d 271, 595 P2d 916, cert den 444 US 930 (1979). The Court therefore had to consider whether a conservation necessity justified the state conviction of a tribal member who was exercising a tribal right in accordance with tribal law. It did not decide whether such a necessity is relevant to a state’s prosecution when the tribal member has violated tribal as well as state law and is therefore not exercising a tribal right.
To the extent that United States v. Sohappy, supra, supports the majority’s position, its language is both dictum and incorrect.3 Sohappy involved a federal prosecution of *186Indians for fishing in the Celilo area in 1982, during the same closed season during which defendant fished. The defendants were convicted of violating the Lacey Act, which prohibits transporting, selling or acquiring fish taken or possessed in violation of tribal or state law. 16 USC § 3372(a). The defendants conceded that they had violated tribal law. The Ninth Circuit held that Congress intended the act to apply to Indians who violated tribal law within “Indian country.” That holding was sufficient to support the defendants’ convictions. However, because the defendants had also violated state law, the court went on to determine whether the state regulations were reasonable and necessary for conservation purposes.* **4 The only case it cited for the need to make that determination was State v. Reed, supra. It did not note that the defendant in Reed claimed to be acting in conformity with tribal law and that the Washington court did not reach that claim. The Sohappy language is an unnecessary and unsupported extension of the conservation necessity requirement from an area where it is appropriate to one where it is not.
Some basic principles of Indian law provide a clear and simple resolution of this case. Indians have rights superior to state law, not because they are Indians, but because they are members of federally-recognized, quasi-sovereign tribes, with a particular political status resulting from that membership. See Morton v. Mancari, 417 US 535, 554, 94 S Ct 2474, 41 L Ed 2d 290 (1974). In a sense, they have a triple citizenship, members of the tribe, citizens of their state and citizens of the *187United States. The tribes, as political entities, have certain reserved rights with which the states may not interfere; those rights vary from tribe to tribe and are often based on 19th Century treaties or other agreements with the federal government.
For that reason, a state hunting or fishing law does not apply to an Indian who is exercising a tribal right unless there is a conservation necessity.5 That right, however, belongs to the tribe as a political entity, not to an individual Indian. If the tribal government adopts regulations which limit or forbid the exercise of a tribal right by its members, it is nonsense to say that an Indian who acts in violation of those regulations has any tribal protection in doing so. By its regulation, the tribe has prohibited the individual’s action and may have imposed sanctions on it. The tribe has thereby stated that it has no interest in defending what its individual member did. The Indian is no longer functioning in the political status of a member of the tribe but in the status only of a citizen of the state. The Indian is therefore subject to the same state-imposed restrictions as is any other citizen.6 Defendant has no treaty right to assert if his actions violated tribal law. This basic concept — that tribal rights do not belong to individuals — is something the majority fails to accept and is the heart of its error. See 81 Or App at 181 n 6.
Those principles lead to a clear procedure for prosecution. An Indian who is accused of violating a state hunting or fishing regulation may assert in defense that a tribal right permitted what the Indian did. A necessary foundation for that assertion is that the tribe recognizes the Indian’s actions as being an exercise of a tribal right. If the Indian makes such a defense, the state may then show, by proof beyond a reasonable doubt, ORS 161.055(1), one of two things. The state may show that — contrary to defendant’s assertion — the tribal regulations, in fact, forbade what the defendant did. If *188the state does that, the Indian’s status as an Indian becomes irrelevant, as does the existence of a conservation necessity. If the state does not make that showing, the court must presume that the Indian was acting under a tribal right. Under the circumstances here, in order to justify its prosecution, the state must show that a conservation necessity gave it the authority to override the tribe’s rights.7 That is essentially what we said in State v. Gowdy, supra. Despite the multitude of Indian fishing and hunting cases decided since then, Gowdy remains correct. Under it, there was sufficient evidence to justify defendant’s conviction.

 The relevant states and Indian tribes had all closed the season except for Indian ceremonial fishing.

 ORS 509.011(2)(a) provides that it is unlawful to “sell food fish unlawfully caught during a closed season.” Defendant does not argue that he caught the fish lawfully under the tribal permit and that his subsequent sale of the fish outside the limitations of the permit did not violate this statute. As the majority notes, he assigns no error to the sufficiency of the evidence to establish that the fish were unlawfully caught.

The majority states that we are bound by the Ninth Circuit’s Sohappy decision, because the issue is one of federal law. This statement is incorrect. Although we give *186considerable weight to decisions of federal courts of appeal on issues of federal law, we are no more bound to follow a decision of the Ninth Circuit than is the First Circuit or the Eleventh Circuit. The ultimate authority on federal questions is the United States Supreme Court. When we disagree with the Ninth Circuit’s interpretation of Supreme Court decisions, we must follow what we believe to be the controlling law, rather than perpetuate a misreading of it.

 The court in United States v. Sohappy, supra, 770 F2d at 823, quoted from Puyallup Tribe v. Washington Game Dept., 391 US 392, 398, 88 S Ct 1725, 20 L Ed 2d 689 (1968), that
“* * * the manner of fishing, the size of the take, the restriction of commercial fishing, and the like may be regulated by the State in the interest of conservation, provided the regulation meets appropriate standards and does not discriminate against the Indian.”
It is obvious that the Supreme Court was discussing state regulations which limited the tribes’ right to exercise their reserved rights. It is equally obvious that these limits on state authority have no application to an individual Indian who fishes or hunts in violation of tribal law.

Some courts say that the state regulation is invalid. It is more correct to say that the state may not apply its regulation to Indians exercising tribal rights. The regulation remains effective as to non-Indians and as to Indians who are not exercising a tribal right or who do not have tribal rights.

 In prosecuting an Indian who hunts or fishes in violation of a tribal regulation, the state is not enforcing the tribe’s regulations. Rather, it is enforcing the state’s laws. The only relevance of the tribal regulations is to remove the tribe’s protection from the Indian’s violation of state law.

 The majority, consistently with some federal cases, discusses the issue in terms of whether the state has jurisdiction to try the defendant. This language confuses the issue. It is often difficult to decide whether the defendant acted consistently with a tribal right without first determining what the defendant did. That determination is peculiarly for the jury in a criminal case. Yet, if the determination decides the court’s jurisdiction, how is the jury ever to have the question presented to it, and what verdict is it to render? The same point can be made concerning the existence of a conservation necessity. It is more appropriate to say that a defendant who assertedly acted under a treaty right is entitled to an acquittal unless the prosecution proves either a violation of tribal law or a conservation necessity.