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Hugh Carey
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Information


Name: Urban

Tribe: Various

American Indian
population:
67,991 (statewide)

Percent of MT
population: 6.2%

Percent living
off reservations: 35%

"I thought we needed [an extradition agreement] for the basic principle of having one," she says. The tribe, as a sovereign nation, she says, should have the power to take dangerous individuals out of their communities and hand them over to the state.

After initially reviewing the bill in April 2008, the Crow Legislature decided to hold public hearings on the issue, Cabrera says. As far as she or anyone else in the tight-knit reservation community knows, those hearings never happened.

So the problem persists.

"We get requests continually from the federal government, state and county governments to have certain persons given over into their authority so they can face charges," Cabrera says. "Yet, I don't have a statute under which I can proceed without violating his civil rights and return him to that jurisdiction to face those charges."

For Cabrera, whose job is to protect the public safety, it's an undesirable position—for everybody involved.

"It cuts against the tribe and the public interest here because I potentially have a felon with violent tendencies running around loose," she says in frustration. "And, the best I can hope for is if he commits a crime under tribal law while on the reservation, I'll get a crack at him."

Giving Cabrera or any prosecutor that opportunity was something Deputee had no intention of doing.

While Deputee says he didn't definitively know that there was a warrant out for his arrest, he assumed as much. He kept a low profile on the reservation, moving from town to town, researching and asking questions about jurisdictional laws.

When he did leave the reservation, he says he was careful not to drive or drink, always becoming paranoid and anxious to return.

At the Big Horn County Courthouse, sandwiched between Custer and Crow streets in downtown Hardin, Sibley and the sheriff's personnel were aware of Deputee's general whereabouts. Because of the proximity of their office to the reservation and the fact that a lot of county employees are enrolled tribal members, plus the way in which talk circulates in the small town "there's a lot of things that I know, but I can't prove," Sibley says.

Big Horn County is 4,995 square miles of rolling sage-covered hills and fenced grazing pastures bisected by the thrumming traffic of Interstate 90 and the fluid meandering of the Big Horn River. The bulk of the Crow Reservation, Montana's largest, covers more than 60 percent of the county. The Northern Cheyenne Reservation, which rests along the Crow Reservation's eastern border, sits on another 6 percent of county land.

The Northern Cheyenne Reservation, unlike the Crow, has an extradition agreement with the state. If Montana has an active warrant for someone on the reservation, law enforcement sends a copy to the Northern Cheyenne tribal police. Should the tribal police approve the warrant, they issue a tribal warrant and arrest the individual.

The arrested person then must choose to waive his extradition rights or appear in tribal court for an extradition hearing. If the court then finds sufficient probable cause for extradition, the accused will be turned over to the authorities who issued the original warrant.

As hot summer days faded into fall on the Crow Reservation, Deputee continued to successfully avoid any legal action.

After the initial panic passed, he says he tried to live a somewhat normal lifestyle. For months, he worked as a plumber, visited friends, always keeping an eye out for the law. "My thought was just to live here and stay here forever," he says.

If not for a growing paranoia and inner demons, he might have done just that.

Deputee learned from other people avoiding arrest on the reservation that he wasn't as untouchable as he had believed.

Using the federal government's Violent Crime Task Force, state or county attorneys can make a formal request for an "unlawful flight to avoid arrest warrant," says Mark Murphy, Yellowstone County's chief criminal deputy attorney.

If there is a federal interest in the offense, and the state or county can meet the burden of proof, the U.S. Attorney's office can take a case, making the crime fall under federal jurisdiction. In that case, Deputee's "immunity" dissolves.

However, the state or county rarely meet the criteria to instigate federal action, Murphy says. Especially in cases like Deputee's.