U.S. Supreme Court Notebook

Supreme Court limits warrantless vehicle searches near homes


WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is putting limits on the ability of police to search vehicles when they do not have a search warrant.

The court sided 8-1 Tuesday with a Virginia man who complained that police walked onto his driveway and pulled back a tarp covering his motorcycle, which turned out to be stolen.

They acted without a warrant, relying on a line of Supreme Court cases generally allowing police to search a vehicle without a warrant.

The justices said the automobile exception does not always apply when searching vehicles parked adjacent to a home.

 

Solicitor General: Supreme Court should hear Crow case
 

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court should review a case in which a Crow tribal member and game warden from Montana is asserting his treaty right to hunt elk in Wyoming’s Bighorn National Forest, a top official with the U.S. Department of Justice said.

A ruling could resolve disagreements among lower courts with regard to tribal treaty rights, U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco wrote in his recommendation, issued this month.

Clayvin Herrera is appealing his misdemeanor conviction for killing an elk in the forest in January 2014. He was sentenced to probation, ordered to pay $8,080 in fines and costs and lost his hunting and fishing privileges for three years.

Herrera’s defense argues the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty granted tribal members the right to hunt on unoccupied lands that the Crow Tribe had ceded to the United States through the treaty, including large portions of Wyoming and Montana.

The Wyoming Supreme Court rejected his case, saying the issue was decided by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1995. The 10th Circuit ruling was, in part, based on an 1896 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said tribal treaty rights “are irreconcilable with state sovereignty.” The appeals court also ruled that the area became “occupied” when it became a national forest.

The 1896 Supreme Court ruling has since been overturned, Francisco noted.

The Idaho Supreme Court, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Montana Supreme Court all recognize tribal hunting rights on unoccupied lands, including national forests, Francisco wrote. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling could settle the issue and determine the definition of “unoccupied lands”, he said.

The recommendation makes it much more likely the Supreme Court will hear the case, said Maylinn Smith, co-director of the Margery Hunter Brown Indian Law Clinic at the University of Montana in Missoula

“Wyoming is the outlier,” she told The Billings Gazette . “Every other state recognizes treaty rights, unless they’ve been expressly abrogated.”

The Wyoming attorney general has the opportunity to respond to the solicitor general’s brief. If the U.S. Supreme Court decides to take on the case, both sides will likely have to write briefs arguing their case.

The U.S. Supreme Court takes the ­summer off. It resumes deliberations in October.


 

High court rejects inmate’s appeal in ­slaying of 3


COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has declined the appeal of an Ohio inmate who has long maintained his innocence in the 1994 slaying of three people.

The court’s Tuesday decision involves the case of Kevin Keith. He is serving a life sentence for killing two women and a 4-year-old girl in what prosecutors said was retaliation for his arrest in a drug sweep.

Lawyers for Keith say the personnel file of a state forensics investigator who worked on his case contains allegations she had a habit of providing police departments answers they wanted in cases.

Attorneys for the 54-year-old Keith, who is black, also say the file shows the investigator used racial slurs against co-workers.

Prosecutors say there’s no evidence the file would have made a difference at trial.