Ex Parte Nowabbi

1936 OK CR 123, 61 P.2d 1139, 60 Okla. Crim. 111, 1936 Okla. Crim. App. LEXIS 90
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma
DecidedOctober 26, 1936
DocketNo. A-9055.
StatusPublished
Cited by23 cases

This text of 1936 OK CR 123 (Ex Parte Nowabbi) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Oklahoma primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ex Parte Nowabbi, 1936 OK CR 123, 61 P.2d 1139, 60 Okla. Crim. 111, 1936 Okla. Crim. App. LEXIS 90 (Okla. Ct. App. 1936).

Opinion

DOYLE, J.

(after stating the facts as above). This is an application for discharge from imprisonment in the state penitentiary by writ of habeas corpus on the part of David Nowabbi. The petitioner is in the custody of the warden of the state penitentiary, under sentence of imprisonment at hard labor for life, pronounced and entered November 15, 1923, by the district court of Push-mataha county, in pursuance of the verdict of a jury finding him guilty of murder and assessing, his punishment at imprisonment in the state penitentiary for life. The information filed in said district court September 19,1923, omitting merely formal parts, charges: “That Nelson Cooper and David Nowabbi did, in Pushmataha county in the state of Oklahoma on or about the 23 day of April, 1923, commit the crime of murder in manner and form as follows, to wit: Did then and there willfully, wrongfully, and unlawfully, and feloniously, with premeditated design to effect the death of a human being, shoot and kill Davidson Houston with a certain rifle, with a pre *127 meditated design and intent to kill and murder him the said Davidson Houston, contrary to,” etc.

The judgment and sentence against petitioner upon his separate trial was on appeal to this court affirmed. See Nowabbi v. State, 31 Okla. Cr. 158, 237 Pac. 868.

It is claimed on behalf of the petitioner that the crime of murder of which he stands convicted having been committed on the Restricted Indian Allotment of the said Davidson Houston, deceased, a full-blood Choctaw Indian, the petitioner also being a full-blood Choctaw Indian, it was committed on land in the Indian country under the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, and being a crime committed then and there in violation of the laws of the United States, the sole and exclusive jurisdiction thereof was in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma. “Therefore: The trial, conviction and sentence in the district court of Pushma-taha county, Oklahoma, were illegal, null and void.”

Wherefore petitioner was deprived of his liberty without due process of law, and his confinement is in contravention to the Constitution and laws of the United States.

The sixth article of the Constitution of the United States declares:

“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

The Tenth Amendment, thereto declares:

*128 “The powers not delegated to' the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to' the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

And section 1 of article 1 of the Oklahoma Constitution declares that:

“The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land.”

The language of article 6 and the aforesaid section is direct and certain, and the adjudications of the United States Supreme Court on this question are conclusive on the state courts.

By the Enabling Act of June 16, 1906, 34 Stat. 267, Congress provided for the admission of Oklahoma into the Union as a state on an equal footing with the original states. Compliance with stated conditions were made a prerequisite to the admission and these conditions were complied with. On November 13, 1907, by proclamation of the President, Oklahoma was admitted into the Union as a state with all of the powers of sovereignty, dominion, and jurisdiction which pertain to the original states, subject like them only to the Constitution of the United .States.

Several of the conditions of the Enabling Act relate to Indians and Indian lands and to the respective relations thereto of the United States and the state are as follows:

Section 1 of the Enabling Act provides:

“That nothing contained in the said Constitution shall be construed to limit or impair the rights of person or property pertaining to the Indians of said Territories (so long as such rights shall remain unextinguished) or to limit or affect the authority of the Government of the United States to' malee any law or regulation respecting *129 such Indians, their lands, property, or other rights by treaties, agreement, law, or otherwise, which it would have been competent to make if this Act had never been passed.”

.Section 2 provides:

“That all male persons over the age of twenty-one years, who are members of any Indian nation or tribe in said Indian Territory and Oklahoma, and who have resided within the limits of said proposed state for at least six months next preceding the election, are hereby authorized to vote for and choose delegates to1 form a constitutional convention for said proposed state; and all persons qualified to vote for said delegates shall be eligible to serve as delegates.”

Section 3 provides:

“The Constitution shall be republican in form, and make no distinction in civil or political rights on account of race or color.”

Subdivision 2, § 3, requires that the Constitution shall prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors within those parts of the proposed state known as the Indian Territory and the Osage Indian Reservation, and within any other parts of said state which existed as Indian reservations on January 1, 1906, and shall prohibit the shipment or conveyance of such liquors from other parts of the state into the portions just described; the prohibition to continue for a period of 21 years, and thereafter until the people shall otherwise provide by constitutional amendment and proper state legislation; with a proviso for the establishment of state agencies for the sale of liquors for medicinal purposes and to bonded apothecaries, or denaturized alcohol for industrial purposes and of alcohol for scientific purposes; and with elaborate provisions for carrying the prohibition into effect and preventing any abuse of the limited privileges con *130 ferred; it being declared, at the same time, that “upon the admission of said state into the Union these provisions shall be immediately enforceable in the courts of said state.”

Subdivision 3 provides:

“That the people inhabiting said proposed state do agree and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title in or to any unappropriated public lands lying within the boundaries thereof, and to all lands lying within said limits owned or held by any Indian, tribe, or nation; and that until the title to any such public land shall have been extinguished by the United States, the same shall be and remain subject to the jurisdiction, disposal, and control of the United States.

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Bluebook (online)
1936 OK CR 123, 61 P.2d 1139, 60 Okla. Crim. 111, 1936 Okla. Crim. App. LEXIS 90, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ex-parte-nowabbi-oklacrimapp-1936.