Sharp v. Murphy

Sharp v. Murphy
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 27, 2018 Decided July 9, 2020
Full case name	Tommy Sharp, Interim Warden Oklahoma State Penitentiary, Petitioner v. Patrick Dwayne Murphy
Docket no.	17-1107
Citations	591 U.S. ___ (more) 140 S. Ct. 2412 207 L. Ed. 2d 1043
Argument	Oral argument
Case history
Prior	Oklahoma state court jury convicted Murphy of murder in and imposed the death penalty; conviction upheld, sub nom. Murphy v. State, 2002 OK CR 24, 47 P.3d 876; cert. denied, 538 U.S. 985 (2003); Petition for writ of habeas corpus denied, sub nom. Murphy v. Trammell, No. 6:12-cv-00191, 2015 WL 2094548 (E.D. Okla. May 5, 2015); reversed, Murphy v. Royal, 866 F.3d 1164 (10th Cir. 2017); rehearing denied, 875 F.3d 896 (10th Cir. 2017); cert. granted, sub nom. Royal v. Murphy, 138 S. Ct. 2026 (2018).
Holding
For Major Crimes Act purposes, land reserved for the Creek Nation since the 19th century remains "Indian country".
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan Neil Gorsuch · Brett Kavanaugh
Case opinions
Per curiam
Dissent	Thomas (did not file or join an opinion)
Dissent	Alito (did not file or join an opinion)
Gorsuch took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
Major Crimes Act 18 U.S.C. § 1151

Sharp v. Murphy, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a Supreme Court of the United States case of whether Congress disestablished the Muscogee (Creek) Nation reservation. After holding the case from the 2018 term, the case was decided on July 9, 2020, in a per curiam decision following McGirt v. Oklahoma that, for the purposes of the Major Crimes Act, the reservations were never disestablished and remain Native American country.

In 1866, Congress established reservation boundaries for the Muscogee (Creek), Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Seminole Nations. The Muscogee (Creek) Nation boundaries composes three million acres in Eastern Oklahoma, including most of the city of Tulsa. The boundaries for all five nations consist of over 19 million acres and nearly the entire eastern half of Oklahoma. In 1907, Congress admitted Oklahoma to the Union as the 46th state and federal territorial courts immediately transferred all non-federal cases involving Native Americans to state courts.^[1] However, in the process, it has been found that Congress never officially disestablished the tribal reservations, a requirement for a tribal reservation to lose that status as demanded under Solem v. Bartlett (1984).^[2]

The situation arose following the appeal of a convicted murderer, Patrick Murphy, a member of the Muscogee-Creek tribe, with his crime taking place within the boundaries of Muscogee-Creek reservation as delimited by Congress in 1866. The appeal addressed whether the federal territorial courts had congressional authorization to make this transfer, as if the lands were still a tribal reservation, Murphy's crime would become subject to federal jurisdiction rather than Oklahoma.^[3] Although this case is specific to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, the Court's decision is likely to also apply to reservations of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole Nations because all five tribes have similar histories within the state of Oklahoma.

The case was first heard by the Supreme Court in its 2018–2019 term; Justice Neil Gorsuch recused himself due to having participated as a federal appellate judge when the case was heard in lower courts, which created a potential deadlock between the remaining eight Justices. The Supreme Court announced at the end of the term that it would hold additional oral arguments during the 2019 term.^[4] It also heard a second case, McGirt v. Oklahoma, in May 2020 involving similar matters and which Justice Gorsuch had no prior conflict with.^[5]