## Facts

- Billy Jo Lara, an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, was not a member of the Spirit Lake Sioux Tribe.
- Spirit Lake tribal authorities issued an exclusion order barring Lara from the Spirit Lake Reservation.
- Lara returned to the reservation in defiance of the order and was arrested by a Bureau of Indian Affairs officer working with the tribe.
- During the arrest, Lara struck the officer.
- Lara pleaded guilty in Spirit Lake Tribal Court to a tribal offense (“violence to a policeman”) based on the same incident.
- The United States then indicted Lara in federal court for assaulting a federal officer under 18 U.S.C. § 111.
- Lara moved to dismiss the federal indictment under the Double Jeopardy Clause, arguing the tribal conviction barred a second prosecution for the same conduct.

## Issues

1. Whether Congress has constitutional authority to authorize tribes to exercise criminal jurisdiction over nonmember Indians by recognizing and affirming that power in 25 U.S.C. § 1301(2).
2. Whether, after a tribal prosecution of a nonmember Indian under § 1301(2), the Double Jeopardy Clause bars a subsequent federal prosecution based on the same conduct, or whether the dual-sovereignty doctrine permits both prosecutions.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the en banc Eighth Circuit.
- The Court held that Congress has constitutional authority to relax federal-law restrictions on tribes’ inherent powers of self-government, including criminal jurisdiction over nonmember Indians.
- The Court construed 25 U.S.C. § 1301(2) as recognizing and affirming inherent tribal authority to prosecute “all Indians,” not delegating federal prosecutorial power to tribes.
- Because the tribal prosecution was an exercise of tribal sovereignty and the federal prosecution was an exercise of federal sovereignty, the Double Jeopardy Clause did not bar the federal § 111 prosecution.

## Legal Principles

- Congress, exercising its Indian affairs powers, may alter federal-law limits on the exercise of tribal self-government and may recognize and affirm tribes’ inherent criminal jurisdiction over nonmember Indians.
- A tribal prosecution undertaken pursuant to recognized inherent tribal authority is attributable to the tribe as a separate sovereign, not to the federal government as delegator.
- Under the dual-sovereignty doctrine, successive prosecutions by a tribe (acting as a sovereign) and the United States for offenses arising from the same conduct do not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause.
- The double-jeopardy analysis turns on the source of prosecutorial authority (separate sovereigns versus the same sovereign), not on factual overlap or similarity of offense elements.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld Congress’s authority to recognize and affirm tribes’ inherent criminal jurisdiction over nonmember Indians and held that a federal prosecution after a tribal conviction for the same conduct is permitted because the tribe and the United States prosecute as separate sovereigns.


United States v. Lara, 541 U.S. 193 (2004)