The Klamath River Killing

A white man was convicted in federal court of murdering a Klamath Indian and sentenced to life imprisonment. The shooting occurred on the Klamath River, within an extension of a California reservation created by executive order. The prosecution argued the extension was lawfully part of the reservation, that the riverbed was included, and that a federal court could try a non-Indian for killing an Indian on a reservation. The defence argued the river lay outside the reservation, that the extension was not validly created, and that as a man of no Indian blood he fell outside federal jurisdiction. He also complained that the jury was not allowed to hear evidence that another man, since dead, had confessed to the shooting.