Judge Cundiff Issues Ruling in Herrera Case

Sheridan County Circuit Court Judge Shelley Cundiff issued an order on June 11 regarding the case of Clayvin Herrera Vs. The State of Wyoming. Judge Cundiff’s order states that Native American Tribal Members have to abide by Wyoming Game and Fish regulations when not hunting on an established reservation. Per statute, Herrera can appeal the decision within 30 days of when the order was issued.

The case began in 2014, when Herrera and two other tribal members embarked on an elk hunt that began on the Crow tribe’s reservation in southern Montana and ultimately crossed into the neighboring Bighorn National Forest in Wyoming, where three elk were shot and killed illegally. In April of 2016, a six-person jury in Sheridan County Circuit Court found Clayvin Herrera guilty on charges of knowingly taking an antlered animal out of season in Wyoming and being an accessory after the fact. The Crow tribal member received a suspended jail sentence and was ordered to pay fines in the amount of $8,080. Herrera also lost his hunting privileges for three years. 

Herrera appealed the sentence, arguing that when his tribe gave up land in present-day Montana and Wyoming under an 1868 treaty, the tribe retained the right to hunt on the land, including land that became Wyoming’s Bighorn National Forest. The Treaty of Fort Laramie grants hunting rights to Crow tribal members, who “shall have the right to hunt on the unoccupied lands of the United States so long as game may be found thereon, and as long as peace subsists among the whites and Indians on the borders of the hunting districts.”

The State of Wyoming argued that the Bighorn National Forest is not “unoccupied” and the Crow tribe’s hunting rights ceased to exist as the treaty would have been considered void after Wyoming became a state in 1890 or after establishment of the Bighorn National Forest in 1897.

In April of 2017, Fourth Judicial District Court Judge John Fenn upheld the conviction in Circuit Court a year prior. The case eventually ended up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, where in May of last year, the high court sided with Herrera, and vacated the Court’s judgement, and remanded the case back to the local court for further proceedings.