MUSKOGEE, Okla. (CN) — Jimcy McGirt — the Oklahoma man whose state child rape conviction led to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling on tribal sovereignty and a deluge of convicts demanding their release on a technicality — was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison Thursday.
U.S. District Judge John Heil in the Eastern District of Oklahoma sentenced McGirt, 75, on one count of aggravated sexual abuse on tribal land.
“This case involved defendant sexually assaulting his four-year-old granddaughter while she was under his care,” Heil fumed as McGirt stood shackled before him. “During his time in my courtroom, he has done nothing but talk about himself and think about himself. He has not once talked about the victim.”
McGirt has been in state and federal custody for over 27 years. His attorneys expect him to be released from federal prison within weeks due to 15% credit being given by the Federal Bureau of Prisons for each year served. McGirt is banned from contacting his granddaughter and must stay 100 yards away from her at all times.
Originally convicted in Oklahoma state court in 1997 of first-degree rape the prior year, McGirt was sentenced to two 550-year terms in state prison. Two decades later, McGirt made the novel argument on federal appeal that Oklahoma lacked jurisdiction to try him because the crimes took place on Muscogee (Creek) Nation land while McGirt himself is a member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma.
In a stunning 5-4 ruling in 2020, the Supreme Court agreed and tossed McGirt’s conviction. The court concluded in McGirt v. Oklahoma that the case should have been tried in federal court because Congress never dissolved the reservations allotted to Native Americans who were forcibly relocated from the southeastern United States during the Trail of Tears beginning in the 1830s. Approximately half of Oklahoma is recognized as tribal land, predominately in the east and southeast portions of the state. Up to 15% of Oklahomans identify as Native American.
The strain of McGirt on Oklahoma’s criminal justice system was immediate, as inmates who were convicted in state court under similar circumstances filed appeals arguing Oklahoma lacked jurisdiction in their cases also.
Then-Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter quickly sought to reassure the public, vowing to fight “every single” McGirt appeal.
“The McGirt case does not constitute a get-out-of-jail free card,” Hunter said at the time. “We are not going to allow our justice system to be exploited by people who have murdered, raped or committed other crimes of a serious nature while the federal government considers to re-arrest or adjudicate their cases.”
McGirt put pressure on federal prosecutors, who were tasked with quickly filing federal charges against convicts with pending McGirt appeals in state court. Former Tulsa cop Shannon Kepler, 64, received a federal murder indictment in 2020 after he demanded his McGirt release. Kepler was serving 15 years in state prison at the time for manslaughter in the killing of his daughter’s 19-year-old boyfriend.
A Tulsa federal jury convicted Kepler in 2021. He was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison a year later.
In another high-profile case, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals — the state’s highest criminal appeals court — tossed the conviction of death-row inmate Shaun Bosse, 41, in 2021. He was convicted in 2012 of killing his girlfriend and her two young children in a mobile home south of Oklahoma City on Chickasaw Nation land. Bosse’s victims were tribe members, while he was not.
Bosse stayed on death row because later that year, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled McGirt did not apply retroactively. In a 4-0 ruling, the court held a lower court’s tossing of a murder conviction on Choctaw Nation land was “unauthorized under state law” in spite of McGirt. The court cited the “disruptive and costly consequences” for crime victims in its ruling and urged state leaders, tribal leaders and Congress to settle the issue.
A gridlocked Congress has failed to pass legislation since McGirt that would allow Oklahoma and individual Native American nations to share criminal jurisdiction. Republican Governor Kevin Stitt signed an executive order in December forming a McGirt task force, but several nations rebuffed the gesture as political theatre rather than constructive government-to-government talks.
McGirt was convicted on federal child rape charges in 2020 and he was sentenced to three life terms. That conviction was later tossed by the 10th Circuit, concluding Judge Heil incorrectly told jurors to not consider the validity of witness statements made at McGirt’s state trial 23 years earlier. The Denver-based appeals court ordered a new trial that was scheduled for March, but McGirt accepted a plea agreement on the eve of trial in exchange for a 30-year recommended sentence.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah McAmis told Judge Heil at Thursday’s sentencing hearing that the victim has had to face McGirt in court four times — twice as a five-year-old in the state case, once as an adult during his federal trial and again Thursday at his sentencing. McAmis lauded her bravery for withstanding cross-examination, “being called a liar and having her motives questioned” after she thought she had put the case behind her long ago.
“She deserves finality after all these years,” McAmis said. “She deserves for this to be over.”
The victim was flanked by McAmis and a female relative as she told the judge how she dealt with alcoholism, difficulty in school and a suicide attempt in the aftermath of her assault.
“I didn’t realize how difficult the impact on me would be until adulthood,” she said. “I was paralyzed by trauma when I was asked to come back.”
McGirt declined to make a statement at sentencing, silently glaring at the victim while she spoke.
Approximately 30 spectators were in the gallery, consisting of family, friends and local law enforcement officers.
The Supreme Court refused Oklahoma’s request to reconsider McGirt in 2022, but it did issue a narrow exception in Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta that the state and federal governments share jurisdiction to prosecute defendants who are not Native Americans for crimes on tribal lands.
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