Could a Supreme Court Decision Entitle 2,000 Oklahoma Inmates to New Trials?

“This will stimulate you,” the lawyer Lisa Blatt told the Supreme Court during her rebuttal this month in a case called Carpenter v. Murphy, which will decide whether a large swatch of eastern Oklahoma remains part of the Muscogee Creek reservation granted to the tribe by the federal government in 1832. “There are 2,000 prisoners in state court who committed a crime in the former Indian territory who self-identify as Native American,” Blatt told the court. “This number is grossly under-inclusive because, if the victim was Native American, the state court also lacked jurisdiction. That’s 155 murderers, 113 rapists, and over 200 felons who committed crimes against children.”

It was one of the most dramatic moments of oral argument during a so-far sleepy term of the Court, and it apparently got the Court’s attention. A week after the argument in ,the justices issued an unusual order asking the parties to brief twothat it is not “Indian country,” within the meaning of federal law.