US Supreme Court Ruled the Muscogee Creek Nation Was Never Disestablished
Video Transcribed:
What is the statute of limitation for filing criminal charges under the Muscogee Creek Nation Code? I’m Tulsa attorney James Wirth, and we’re about to talk about the statute of limitation for the Muscogee Creek Nation.
All of this is relevant right now because of the McGirt from the United States Supreme Court in June of 2020, that said the Muscogee Creek Nation was never disestablished.
And now suddenly we know that a good portion of Northeast Oklahoma is actually reservation land, subject to the jurisdiction of the Muscogee Creek Nation, if you are native American.
All right, so a lot of previous cases, current, pending cases that are currently being tried in state court are being dismissed, if the offense was either perpetrated allegedly by a Native American, or against a Native American.
Because for those crimes, they can only be charged in either federal court or in state court, depending on the type of crime it is.
Now we also have 100 years of history of prior charges and convictions that were in state court, when now we know the state court never had jurisdiction over those, they had to be in either the tribal court or the federal court.
So we have a lot of convictions that are being vacated. We have a lot of people that are being let loose. We have a lot of people that are having to be retried in federal court. This is all very fluid. There’s hundreds if not thousands of cases going on and there’s going to be more in the future.
So if you’re in a circumstance where you are Native American, were tried in state court for a crime that occurred on what we now know is reservation land, you’re going to want to know the statute of limitations in the tribal court to see if you get your case dismissed and reversed, whether they can still charge you in the tribal court. So that’s why we want to look at the statute of limitations for the tribe.
So for that, we want to go to Title 14 of the Muscogee Creek Nation Tribal Court, and then go down to section 1-305.
And I’ll list a few different sections there, but essentially what it talks about is that for prosecution of criminal violations of any Muscogee Creek Nation tax law, the statute of limitations is five years after the commission of the violation.
And then for everything else, it talks about the statute of limitations being seven years after the discovery of the crime.
So if it’s not a tax violation, it’s going to be seven years after the discovery of the crime.
If they have not filed criminal charges by that point in the Muscogee Creek Nation Tribal Court, then the Muscogee Creek Nation Tribal Court can not do so, it is too late.
However, that doesn’t mean it can’t be filed in federal court if it’s a major crime, because that’s where those go.
I’ve got another video regarding the statute of limitations under federal law, because if you’re in that scenario where you’re seeing whether you should try to get your state charges dismissed, or whether you should try to get your state conviction overturned, you’re going to want to look at both of those things, depending on the type of offense.
For your specific circumstances though, you don’t want to take just this general information from this video, you’re going to want to talk to an attorney about the exact details of your case. So for that, if you want to talk to someone in my office, go to makelaweasy.com.
