By Anna King
Originally published on Mon November 26, 2012 5:27 pm
A tribal court on the Umatilla Indian Reservation is one of the first to hand-down a long prison term under new tougher criminal sentencing laws enacted by Congress in 2010.
It used to be that tribes could only sentence a Native American criminal to up to one year of jail time -- no matter the crime. Typically the U.S. Justice Department was called in for everything else -– but many cases were dropped.
Now, tribal courts have the power to sentence native criminals who commit crimes on a reservation up to three years per count, for up to nine years.
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