The US Supreme Court [official website] ruled [opinion, PDF] unanimously Monday in United States v. Bryant [SCOTUSblog materials] that the use of tribal-court convictions as predicate offenses in substitute prosecution does not necessarily violate the constitution. The court held that when such convictions occur in proceedings under the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 [text], those convictions were valid when entered. The case revolved around whether a conviction in an Indian tribal court without counsel satisfied 18 USC § 117 [text]. The court found [SCOTUSBlog report] that the Sixth Amendment does not apply to tribal-court proceedings, as under the 1968 law, a lawyer is only required to be appointed for criminal defendants who are sentenced for more than a year in prison; which Bryant was not. As such, since the convictions were valid when entered, the court ruled that they must also be valid today. This ruling is consistent with the court’s stance that “laws which are intended to penalize repeat offenders only punish ‘the last offense committed by the defendant’; they ‘do not change the penalty imposed for the earlier conviction.'”

The court heard oral arguments [JURIST report] on the matter in April. The case arose [Oyez summary] after Michael Bryant, Jr. was convicted on two counts of domestic abuse under § 117 where the two predicate offenses were his convictions in Northern Cheyenne Tribal Court. Bryant moved for dismissal, claiming that the convictions violated the Fifth and Sixth Amendments because they were without counsel. This opinion reversed and remanded an opinion [opinion, PDF] from the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.