Jimcy McGirt Released From Prison After Plea Deal Gave Him Credit For Time Served

The man behind the Supreme Court ruling on tribal jurisdiction is out of prison.

Because Jimcy McGirt is a convicted child rapist, he's now on the sex offender registry and is living in Spaulding, Oklahoma. 

The victim in his case told News On 6 in a statement:

"If you are in that area or know people just, please watch who your kids are around. He has a lot of supporters. You just don't know what people are capable of."

In 1997 In State Court, McGirt was originally sentenced to 500 years in prison. He appealed that conviction all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, resulting in the landmark ruling that vacated the verdict.

He was retried in a federal trial last year and was sentenced to 30 years in prison with credit for time served.

The McGirt ruling changed the landscape of how cases are prosecuted in Oklahoma.

Governor Kevin Stitt points to McGirt being out of prison as one of the negative impacts the ruling has had on the state.

"This is what I've been trying to say all along. There's a two-tiered system of justice based on your race," Stitt said.

Many tribal citizens have been adamant that they are not celebrating the release of a convicted criminal, but that this is a step forward in reestablishing Indigenous rights.

"We're not celebrating as indigenous people the release of a convicted criminal or anything like that, Indigenous people want Law and Order just like everybody else," said Mark Bolin.

Bolin is working toward his PhD in Contemporary Indigenous History and teaches Native American courses at Rogers State University.

He says the steps toward the ruling over tribal jurisdiction started with a separate murder case in 2018 involving two tribal members. 

Two years later, the Supreme Court decided through the McGirt ruling that the tribes still have jurisdiction in much of Eastern Oklahoma for any crimes involving native members on tribal land. 

"That's simply what we're looking at when we look at the McGirt case, we're righting an old wrong," Bolin said.

He says right now the tribal legal system and tribal law enforcement are catching up after 100 years.

Since the ruling, state prosecutors have been frustrated by cases being disrupted, thrown out, or retried.

But Bolin hopes moving forward that tribes, municipalities and counties will work together and find cohesion.

"The more that we have that, just the better off everybody will be, and it's just a matter of ironing out jurisdictions and who can go where," he said.

He says it's not about releasing convicted criminals from prison but making sure indigenous people are going through the federal court system with federal laws, so their rights are recognized.

"Years from now we're going to look at this as a landmark case, but we're also going to see how far we've come in establishing and reestablishing Indigenous rights," Bolin said.

Original story below...

--

Jimcy McGirt, the man at the center of a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2020, was released from prison on Tuesday, May 7.

The United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma announced Thursday, May 2 that the 75-year-old was sentenced to 30 years in prison, but a plea deal gave him credit for time served.

Since he has served 85 percent of that time since being found guilty in June of 1997, he has been released.

The attorney's office said McGirt pleaded guilty to one count of Aggravated Sexual Abuse in Indian Country and as part of that plea agreement, confessed to sexually abusing a child in August 1996.

“Today’s sentence closes a chapter on a perpetrator who has attempted to evade the legal consequences of his actions at every turn,” said United States Attorney Christopher J. Wilson. “For the victim, we hope it is but a beginning. To go into a courtroom—to fight to be heard and to be believed—that takes courage. To do so over three decades requires unimaginable fortitude of spirit. It is our hope the guilty plea and the sentence imposed bring some solace and comfort to those most effected by the defendant’s crimes.”

The McGirt v. Oklahoma case ruled that the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) did not have jurisdiction over cases involving Native Americans on tribal land. 

The ruling said most of eastern and southeastern Oklahoma remains on tribal land and that it was never disestablished by Congress as part of the Oklahoma Enabling Act of 1906.

A court ruled that McGirt had already served a 30-year sentence beginning in 1997 for child sex crimes and that he would be released.

In 1997, the Wagoner County District Court found McGirt guilty of three counts of sex crimes, sentencing him to 500 years in prison. 

McGirt appealed to the OCCA which denied his petition, so he escalated to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The court then reversed the OCCA's ruling with a 5-4 vote, meaning Oklahoma prosecutors have no authority to pursue criminal cases against American Indian defendants in parts of Oklahoma on tribal land. 

In September 2020 he was charged in federal court and in August 2021, McGirt was sentenced to life in federal prison by the eastern district of Oklahoma for sexually abusing a child.

In June 2023, an appeals court then determined that the jury in the 2020 court case had been given bad instructions, which landed him a third federal trial.