Nation & World A6
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THE DAILY HERALD
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WWW.HERALDNET.COM
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TUESDAY, 06.30.2015
Tribal recognition rules revised White House move relaxes some requirements, speeds up process By Kevin Freking Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Some Indian tribes may have a clearer path toward federal recognition under a new Obama administration rule that relaxes some requirements and speeds decision-making, potentially affecting hundreds of groups. Federal acknowledgment means a tribe is treated as a nation within a nation, able to set up its own government, legal system, and taxes and fees. Recognition also brings critical federal investments in medical care, housing and education. It can lead to tribes opening casinos through a separate approval process. In all, there are 566 federal recognized tribes. Hundreds more want to join their ranks. The new regulation updates a 37-year-old process that has been roundly criticized as broken because of the many years and mounds of paperwork that typically went into each application. But the effort to address those criticisms generated a backlash of its own, with some lawmakers and existing
You have a whole generation of people who just die while they’re waiting for it to happen. — Arlinda Locklear, attorney for tribes seeking recognition
tribes with casino operations complaining that the administration’s original proposals set the bar too low. The Obama administration made changes in the final rule that answers many of those concerns, but not all. Kevin Washburn, an assistant secretary at the Department of Interior, announced the regulation Monday during a National Congress of American Indians conference in Minnesota. The most scrutinized changes will be the new criteria that must be met for recognition to occur. Indian groups seeking recognition will no longer have to show that outside parties identified them as an Indian entity dating back to 1900. Washburn said the requirement clashed with the reality of those times.
Many Indians were attempting to hide their identity from outside sources out of fear they would be discriminated against, or worse. “They would have been crazy not to have,” said Washburn, a member of the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma. Petitioners also had to show that their tribe has existed as a community and exercised political control over its members since first contact with European settlers, or as early as 1789. The proposed regulation had changed the threshold to 1934. After much pushback, the final rule sets the date at 1900. Under the current system, which began in 1978, the government has recognized 17 tribes and rejected the petitions of 34 other groups.
Washburn said that even with the changes, “this new process remains rigorous.” The Obama administration had envisioned giving groups who were denied federal recognition another opportunity to re-petition the government. That provision wasn’t included in the final rule. Congress also has the authority to recognize tribes. The Obama administration is moving ahead with the regulation even as lawmakers had expressly warned them to pull it back. A spending bill in the House contains language banning the Interior Department from using federal money to implement or enforce the regulatory change. Arlinda Locklear, an attorney in Washington who has worked on behalf of about a dozen tribes seeking federal acknowledgment, calls the current tribal recognition process heartbreaking because it’s so demanding and takes so long, often more than a decade. “You have a whole generation of people who just die while they’re waiting for it to happen,” Locklear said.
Trooper who shot escapee had law on his side By Colleen Long
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Trading sharp words, a deeply divided Supreme Court upheld the use of a controversial drug in lethal-injection executions Monday, even as two dissenting justices said for the first time they think it’s “highly likely” the death penalty itself is unconstitutional. The justices voted 5-4 in a case from Oklahoma that the sedative midazolam can be used in executions without violating the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Midazolam was used in Arizona, Ohio and Oklahoma executions in 2014. The executions took longer than usual and raised concerns
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — State lawmakers Monday sent the governor a contentious bill that would impose one of the strictest school vaccination laws in the country in reaction to a recent measles outbreak at Disneyland. The Senate reaffirmed the bill striking California’s personal-belief exemption for immunizations on a 24-14 vote. Mississippi and West Virginia are the only two states with such strict requirements in place. Parents opposed to the bill vowed to take legal action even though the issue has been upheld in court, including by the Supreme Court. Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown has not said if he would sign it.
D.C.: Spy agencies may fight poaching in Africa U.S. intelligence agencies are considering whether to provide information, analysis and possibly tactical lessons to African governments about how to attack wildlife poaching networks. “We are looking for opportunities” where “we can contribute,” Terrance Ford, the national intelligence manager for Africa said in an interview. Infrared and photographic imagery from satellites and other data could help track herds of animals and bands of poachers, and wildlife rangers would benefit from better equipment and by adapting some of the techniques used by military intelligence officers, said U.S. officials.
S.C.: KKK plans rally
Puerto Rico: Debt aid
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Police officers stand over David Sweat after he was shot and captured Sunday in Constable, N.Y.
of a sheriff’s deputy, and Matt had been serving 25 years to life for the killing of his former boss. Cook was alone when he spotted someone walking along the side of a road less than 2 miles from the Canadian border. He got out of his car, approached the man and said, “Hey, come over here,” New York State Police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico said. Sweat fled, and Cook chased him, firing twice, fearing he would lose the fugitive in the trees, officials said. Photos appeared to show emergency crews tending to Sweat’s back as he sat bloodied
in a field. He was listed in serious condition Monday. A 1986 U.S. Supreme Court case known as Tennessee v. Garner laid out how force can be used to capture a fleeing suspect: Deadly force can’t be used to prevent escape unless “the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.” New York state law also allows for deadly force if a dangerous convict is escaping from a detention facility, which is why armed guards may be stationed in towers at prisons. Sweat’s shooting differs
from the recent killing of Walter Scott in South Carolina because Scott was stopped for a minor traffic infraction, was unarmed and was not considered a dangerous criminal, experts said. The white officer who shot the black man five times in the back has been charged with murder. Some people online questioned the decision to fire, but many lauded the trooper. Gov. Andrew Cuomo called Cook a hero and congratulated him on his “great police work.” Onlookers erupted in cheers when the ambulance carrying Sweat passed by.
Supreme Court upholds use of execution drug By Mark Sherman
California passes school vaccine bill
The Ku Klux Klan will hold a rally at the South Carolina State House on July 18 to protest efforts to remove the Confederate flag from the Capitol grounds. Any group can request to hold a rally at the State House as long as its grounds are available, said Brian Gaines, a spokesman for the South Carolina Budget and Control Board. A man identifying himself as the “grand titan” of the North Carolina chapter of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan said his group is holding the demonstration because “to us they are erasing white history and white culture right out of the history books. That’s why they want to take that flag down.”
Associated Press
NEW YORK — A state trooper had the law on his side when he shot unarmed prison escapee David Sweat, apparently in the back, as the convicted killer ran toward a forest near the Canadian border. State and federal law allows the use of deadly force to prevent an escape if the officer believes the escapee poses a significant threat. Law enforcement experts say this shooting was clear-cut. “There cannot be any cleaner situation than this one,” said Maria Haberfeld, head of the law and police science department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “You cannot shoot any fleeing felon, but certainly you can shoot the one who poses a real threat. There was no reason to believe this person who had killed a police officer before was not posing a real threat.” The same legal reasoning applied to the killing of his accomplice, Richard Matt, who was shot three times in the head Friday. Unlike Sweat, he was found with a weapon, a 20-gauge shotgun. Sweat eluded capture for two more days, until he ran across Sgt. Jay Cook, a 21-year veteran who was part of the huge manhunt for the two convicted murderers, who had used power tools to break out of the Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate Dannemora on June 6. Sweat had been serving life without parole in the killing
ACROSS THE U.S.
that the drug did not perform its intended task of putting inmates into a coma-like sleep. Justice Samuel Alito said for a conservative majority that arguments the drug could not be used effectively as a sedative in executions were speculative and he dismissed problems in executions in Arizona and Oklahoma as “having little probative value for present purposes.” In a biting dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, “Under the court’s new rule, it would not matter whether the state intended to use midazolam, or instead to have petitioners drawn and quartered, slowly tortured to death, or actually burned at the stake.” Alito responded, saying “the dissent’s resort to this outlandish rhetoric reveals
the weakness of its legal arguments.” In a separate dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer said the time has come for the court to debate whether the death penalty itself is constitutional. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined Breyer’s opinion. “I believe it highly likely that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment,” Breyer said, drawing on cases he has reviewed in more than 20 years on the Supreme Court bench. More than 100 death rowinmates have been exonerated, showing that the death penalty is unreliable, Breyer said. He said it also is imposed arbitrarily, takes far too long to carry out and has been abandoned by most of the country. Last year, just seven states carried out executions, he said.
In an extremely unusual turn Monday, four justices read their opinions from the bench. Justice Antonin Scalia, part of the court’s majority, read a brief reply to Breyer. “Welcome to Groundhog Day,” Scalia said, noting that the court has repeatedly upheld the use of capital punishment. Scalia used Breyer’s own words to complain that the liberal justices were willing to discard long-settled principles in a term in which the left side of the court won most of the closely contested cases, though not the lethal injection dispute. “It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much,” Scalia said. Breyer employed those exact words several years ago at the end of a term in which the conservative justices frequently prevailed.
Gov. Alejandro Garcia Padilla said Monday he will form a financial team to negotiate with bondholders on delaying debt payments and then restructuring $72 billion in public debt that he says the U.S. island can’t repay. Garcia made the announcement just hours after international economists released a gloomy report on Puerto Rico’s economy in another jolt to the recession-gripped U.S. island. Garcia said he would seek a repayment moratorium of several years but did not provide specifics.
AROUND THE WORLD Austria: U.S. says it will hang tough in nuclear talks While negotiators are still uncertain they can strike a deal on Iran’s nuclear program, a senior administration official said Monday it is “absurd” to believe that negotiators will give in to Iran’s demands. Responding to critics who fear that the United States may be making too many concessions, the official said Washington is sticking to principles outlined in a framework agreement announced April 2 in Lausanne, Switzerland. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks in Vienna. The talks to curb Iran’s nuclear capabilities in exchange for sanctions relief simmered along Monday, as officials waited for Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to complete a day-long trip to Tehran. He is expected to return Tuesday.
Egypt: Top prosecutor killed A car bomb killed Egypt’s chief prosecutor Monday in the country’s first assassination of a senior official in 25 years, marking what could be an escalation in a campaign by Islamic militants toward targeting leaders of a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood. Hisham Barakat led the prosecution of members of the Brotherhood and other Islamists, including former President Mohammed Morsi, who was overthrown by the military in July 2013. Five guards, two drivers and one civilian were injured in the blast. From Herald news services