United States v. Lara

United States v. Lara
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued January 21, 2004 Decided April 19, 2004
Full case name	United States v. Billy Jo Lara
Citations	541 U.S. 193 (more) 124 S. Ct. 1628; 158 L. Ed. 2d 420; 2004 U.S. LEXIS 2738
Case history
Prior	United States v. Lara, 2001 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 20182 (D.N.D. 2001). United States v. Lara, 294 F.3d 1004 (8th Cir. 2002). United States v. Lara, 324 F.3d 635 (8th Cir. 2003).
Holding
As an Indian tribe and the United States are separate sovereigns, prosecuting a crime under both tribal and federal law does not attach double jeopardy.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy David Souter · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer
Case opinions
Majority	Breyer, joined by Rehnquist, Stevens, O'Connor, Ginsburg
Concurrence	Stevens
Concurrence	Kennedy (in judgment)
Concurrence	Thomas (in judgment)
Dissent	Souter, joined by Scalia
Laws applied
U.S. Const. Art. II, §2; U.S. Const. amend. V; 25 U.S.C. § 1301(2)

United States v. Lara, 541 U.S. 193 (2004), was a United States Supreme Court landmark case^[1] which held that both the United States and a Native American (Indian) tribe could prosecute an Indian for the same acts that constituted crimes in both jurisdictions. The Court held that the United States and the tribe were separate sovereigns; therefore, separate tribal and federal prosecutions did not violate the Double Jeopardy Clause.^[2]

In the 1880s, Congress passed the Major Crimes Act, divesting tribes of criminal jurisdiction in regard to several felony crimes. In 1990, the Supreme Court ruled in Duro v. Reina that an Indian tribe did not have the authority to try an Indian criminally who was not a member of that tribe. The following year, Congress passed a law that stated that Indian tribes, because of their inherent sovereignty, had the authority to try non-member Indians for crimes committed within the tribe's territorial jurisdiction.

The defendant, Billy Jo Lara, was charged for acts that were criminal offenses under both the Spirit Lake Sioux Tribe's laws and the federal United States Code. Lara pleaded guilty to the tribal charges, but claimed double jeopardy against the federal charges. The Supreme Court ruled that double jeopardy did not apply to Lara since "the successive prosecutions were brought by separate and distinct sovereign bodies".^[3]