The numbers used by the Stitt Administration and the Oklahoma Attorney General concerning how many criminal cases are being missed due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s McGirt v. Oklahoma decision don’t seem to be accurate.
The Atlantic enlisted This Land podcaster Rebecca Nagle and KOSU’s Indigenous Affairs correspondent Allison Herrera to check the numbers. They found in the current Supreme Court challenge to McGirt that the State of Oklahoma is claiming it has lost jurisdiction over 18,000 prosecutions a year, “many of which are now going un-investigated and unprosecuted, endangering public safety.”
Nagle and Herrera were unable to verify that number through the Governor’s Office or the Attorney General’s Office. They also found by studying prosecutions within tribal reservations the numbers touted by Governor Stitt and Attorney General John O’Connor do not hold up to scrutiny.
The U.S. Supreme Court is set this week to hear the oral arguments in the Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta case, in which the state of Oklahoma is seeking joint jurisdiction to prosecute non-Native offenders who commit crimes within an established tribal reservation.
Read The Atlantic story here. (You may need a subscription, but the site does allow a number of articles to be viewed for free.)
Note: THE ATLANTIC Monthly is a liberal commentary opinion, NOT a news source.