AKWESASNE–Amanda Herne of Akwesasne was charged with driving while intoxicated (DWI) in September 2012. She had been involved in an accident on St. Regis Road in Hogansburg.
St. Regis Tribal Police investigated the vehicular crash and arrested Ms. Herne. A Franklin County grand jury indicted Ms. Herne for aggravated driving while intoxicated due to a high blood-alcohol count (above .08). She also had a previous DWI conviction within the past ten years that upgraded the charges.Following the accident investigation, she was also charged with speeding.
Franklin County Judge Robert Main, Jr. presided over a hearing concerning the criminal charges.
Defense Attorney (and St. Regis Tribal Gaming Commission Chairperson) Vaughn Aldrich weighed in on the limits of the tribal police powers. He asserted that the tribal police authority, granted under New York state authority is severely limited. He also offered that, short of “hot pursuit,” where police have to follow suspects beyond jurisdictional limits due to public safety concerns, the tribal police had no authority outside the reservation.
Based on this legal assertion, Attorney Aldrich called for a dismissal of the criminal charges.
Franklin County Assistant District Attorney Glenn MacNeill argued that the tribal police were compelled to make the arrest due to the alcohol involved in the accident.
Franklin County failed to account for the speeding charge in the county’s arguments. Judge Main dismissed the speeding charge as a result.
The real legal issue being considered in these proceedings was the status of the Akwesasne Territory where the accident took place. If the tribal police have no jurisdiction there, then either the status of the land in the Hogansburg Triangle lies with New York State Police, or murkier, the land is under no criminal justice jurisdiction at all.
The marijuana possession criminal charges St. Regis tribal police placed againstEric Wilson in 2010 come to mind in this instance. The Wilson defense team argued thatin the location where the Wilson case arrest physically took place, the tribal police had no jurisdiction. They pointed out that the location was “off the reservation,” according to published reports. The lower court agreed with that defense argument. On appeal, a higher court overturned that decision, considering that there was probable cause for the tribal police to pull over Mr. Wilson. Wilson eventually pled guilty to the criminal charges and was sentenced to a year in federal prison for the 125-pound marijuana seizure arrest.
Because the Herne arrest by tribal police took place within the Hogansburg Triangle, the reservation boundaries drawn up in the 1796 United States Treaty with the Seven Nations of Canada came into play.
The St. Regis Tribal Policewas re-established as a New York State criminal jurisdiction in 2005 under an agreement with the St. Regis Tribal Council. Police powers were specifically limited to the reservation boundaries. A contingent of the New York State Bureau of Criminal Investigation unit provides background check verification to tribal gaming commission-issued gaming licenses in Akwesasne. These state troopers operate onsite from the tribally-operated Class III Akwesasne Mohawk Casino under the terms of the Tribe-State Gaming Compact revenue-sharing agreement. The New York State Police do not publicly list this location as an Akwesasne barracks.
Ruling on the Amanda Herne arrest, Judge Main dismissed the DWI charges over the lack of jurisdiction by the tribal police during the accident investigation. According to published reports, Main wrote: “Tribal Police officers are truly New York state police officers…they have all the powers, within their jurisdiction, of any other New York State police officer. But the instrument of their creation…limits their geographic reach…to the St. Regis Reservation in Franklin County.”
Main continued in his ruling that the tribal police were right to respond to the crash, as community protectors, since they were the closest law enforcement agency, but they had no power to arrest. Therefore, “the court is constrained to dismiss the indictment.”
Judge Main concluded that the tribal police were “community citizens” who may testify at grand jury proceedings. “In these instances, they would simply be exercising their prerogatives of citizenship and not the duties or functions of a police officer,” he wrote.
