Oklahoma’s Suspect Argument in Front of the Supreme Court
Next week, by teleconference, the Supreme Court will hear a case that will determine whether much of Oklahoma is an Indian reservation. While the case hinges on a textual legal question, much of the discussion—inside and outside the Court—has focused on the potential impact of the decision. Oklahoma argues that if the Supreme Court affirms the reservation in the eastern half of the state, decades of state criminal convictions could be re-opened and possibly thrown out. On the surface, that sounds like a realistic fear. But as a careful examination reveals, it is anything but.
The background to the case is a bit winding, but it starts on an August night in 1999, when Patrick Murphy pulled his girlfriend’s ex-husband out of the backseat of a Dodge sedan, slashed his chest and neck, cut off his genitals, and left him on the side of the road to bleed to death. Murphy was arrested, found guilty, and sentenced to death by the state of Oklahoma. But in 2017, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Oklahoma didn’t have jurisdiction to prosecute the murder, because it had occurred on the reservation of Murphy’s tribe, the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Oklahoma said that reservation no longer exists.
The day Murphy won in federal court, Jimcy McGirt was serving life without parole (now called ). It appears that McGirt’s case got picked this term so the Court could answer the reservation question with all nine justices weighing in.
