Murder At White Mountain

A Black man, a U.S. citizen, was convicted of murdering another Black man on an Indian reservation in a western territory and was sentenced to death. He was tried in the territory's district court sitting as a United States court. On habeas corpus, he argued that the court lacked jurisdiction to try a killing on the reservation, relying in part on a recent act of Congress that had changed how crimes by Indians in the territories were to be tried. He also complained about how the grand jury that indicted him had been assembled. The prosecution argued that the territorial district court had long had jurisdiction over murders by non-Indians on reservations within the territory and still did.