MUSKOGEE – A federal magistrate judge on Wednesday threw out the civil suit against three officers in the arrest and later death of a man at Eagletown on March 13, 2022.
Bobby Dale Barrick died a few days after his arrest. His cause of death was listed as acute respiratory failure due to acute kidney injury. Barrick’s wife Barbara filed suit in federal court against law enforcement officers, claiming they violated his constitutional rights in the method of his arrest.
On Wednesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Gerald L. Jackson granted summary judgment to defendants Matthew Kasbaum and Quentin Lee, both deputies at the time, and Mark Hannah, a game warden.
Barrick was a member of the Choctaw Nation, and in his ruling, Judge Jackson acknowledged that his findings “may have far-reaching implications for tribal citizens in the Eastern District of Oklahoma, every square inch of which continues to be reservation land.
“The correct legal conclusion here carries the implication that tribal members in the eastern District of Oklahoma have fewer constitutional rights than non-tribal members, and leaves no check on the actions of cross-commissioned state officers who encounter tribal members,” the judge wrote.
What was the judge’s finding that could cause such a remark?
The judge found that though the deputies were wearing sheriff’s department uniforms and driving county vehicles, and though Hannah was wearing a state game warden uniform and driving a state vehicle, on that day, in response to that call, they were, in fact, acting as tribal officers of the Choctaw Nation.
“Because Barrick was a tribal member, Kasbaum, Lee, and Hannah only had jurisdiction to act as law enforcement officers against him because they were cross-commissioned officers of the Choctaw Nation Police Force, and in doing so they were exercising authority possessed by virtue of Choctaw nation law. Despite the uniforms they were wearing, the law is clear that any law enforcement authority over Barrick on reservation land is derived from the Choctaw Nation, not the State of Oklahoma,” the judge wrote.
But why might this cause concern for tribal members, as the judge suggested?
Because while a federal law allows people to sue for protection of their civil rights by someone acting under the authority of state law, that same protection is not afforded tribal members, and Choctaw Nation tribal law offers no such provision for protection of civil rights of its tribal members by someone acting under the authority of tribal law.
In other words, Barrick’s widow had no right to sue for civil rights violations.
The defendants’ attorneys told the judge they had not considered these implications.
The judge went on to say: “As a result, the undersigned Magistrate Judge is mindful of Judge Gorsuch’s concluding words in McGirt: “In reaching our conclusion about what the law demands of us today, we do not pretend to foretell the future, and we proceed well aware of the potential for cost and conflict around jurisdiction boundaries, especially ones that have gone unappreciated for so long.”
Ironically, the judge made his important ruling quoting Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch on July 9, precisely five years since the landmark Supreme Court McGirt decision which redefined reservation land in Oklahoma.
On the heels of the judge’s ruling Wednesday, officer Quentin Lee was a bit less articulate than Judge Jackson had been.
“Ha ha, f— you McCurtain County paper, it’s over, we were vindicated,” he wrote on Facebook.
Following Barrick’s arrest and death in 2022, for a long time this newspaper was the only news media reporting the incident.
When the sheriff’s department refused to turn over any reports, body cam footage, etc. of the incident, the newspaper enlisted the help of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which advocates for the newsgathering rights of journalists and the First Amendment.
Committee lawyers later sued the sheriff’s office on behalf of the newspaper, and rather than going to trial, attorneys for the sheriff’s office handed over the requested documents and footage.
Some of the body cam footage was especially emotional, with Barrick begging for his life at the time of his arrest and predicting that officers would kill him.
County officials had opted not to settle the case because there was evidence that Barrick had resisted arrest when a Taser was used on him that day.
But defense attorneys did not anticipate the findings the judge made, a conclusion much more basic and far-reaching than anything they had ever argued.
