Legal cases can drag on for what seems like forever. Periods featuring little movement can suddenly give way to a flurry of activity, and not every development makes it into the headlines, especially as more and more lawsuits and criminal charges are filed as time goes by.
Chronicling how cases resolve to build Oklahoma’s historical record supports one of NonDoc’s core values. While big cases can receive lots of attention, news reports sometimes fail to catch the plea agreement of a small town police chief or the dismissal of charges against a mother.
With 2024 wrapped up and 2025 barreling down the boulevard of bureaucracy — seriously, it’s mid-February? — the following lists offer updates from cases NonDoc covered last year.
Officials caught up in legal battles as both plaintiffs and defendants
From the attorney general’s office to small-town police departments, several Oklahoma officials ended up in high-profile legal battles. Two former officials will leave their cases behind in 2024:
- Former Sen. Cody Rogers (R-Tulsa) vowed to appeal when a judge dismissed his allegations of ballot harvesting in last year’s Senate District 37 election. Rogers lost his June 2024 primary to now-Sen. Aaron Reinhardt (R-Jenks) by a margin of 85 votes. Based on court records, he did not file an appeal; and
- Shawn McKibbin, the former Chelsea chief of police, reached a plea agreement for a six-year deferred sentence after being charged with financial crimes in December 2023. As part of his plea, McKibbin must pay $6,500 dollars and surrender his CLEET certification.
Two others will continue their cases into the new year:
- The lawsuit filed by Rep. Justin “JJ” Humphrey (R-Lane) and former Rep. Kevin McDugle (R-Broken Arrow) against District Attorney Jason Hicks is before the Oklahoma Supreme Court after oral arguments scheduled for Jan. 22 were cancelled the day before. After the pair sued Hicks, arguing he withheld communications related to Richard Glossip’s clemency hearing in front of the Pardon and Parole Board, Associate District Judge G. Brent Russell dismissed the suit last July. Humphrey and McDugle appealed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court. “The oral presentation (before the Supreme Court) will not be reset,” Chief Justice Dustin Rowe wrote in an order;
- Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who recently announced a campaign for governor, filed two lawsuits last year against companies accused of price manipulation during 2021’s Winter Storm Uri. The companies denied the allegations and filed motions to dismiss and transfer the case out of Osage County — where court documents must be physically filed in Pawhuska owing to the lack of e-filing in state courts — but District Judge Stuart Tate denied both requests Jan. 15.
The Tulsa County Family Center for Juvenile Justice, the county’s juvenile detention facility, has been the center of an abuse scandal resulting in a federal lawsuit and state criminal charges against former jailers. While the federal lawsuit, which includes Tulsa County and state officials as defendants, attempts to trod through a procedural morass, the state cases are on hold pending the arraignment of a former detention officer. Some of the cases related to the facility include:
- The federal lawsuit against Tulsa’s juvenile detention facility, filed pseudonymously by children formerly detained there, alleges violations of state law and “rape culture” among the facility staffers. While the case was initially filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma, it was transferred to the Northern District of Oklahoma in August and assigned to District Judge Sara Hill. The several defendants in the case — including the facility’s current and former leadership, several former detention officers, Tulsa County’s Juvenile Bureau, the Tulsa County Board of Commissioners, District Judge Kevin Gray, the Office of Juvenile Affairs and Turn Key Health Clinics, LLC — are filing motions to dismiss themselves as parties to the case. As a result, it remains to be seen which defendants will remain and which may be dismissed;
- On the criminal side, Jonathan Hines, a former juvenile detention officer charged in Tulsa County District Court on five different criminal cases, is set to be arraigned Tuesday, Feb. 18. Hines’ cases, extensively covered by KJRH-TV, include lewd or indecent proposals to a minor, lewd molestation, soliciting a minor for obscene material, human trafficking, bringing a phone into the jail and destroying evidence;
- Meanwhile, Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler has dismissed the criminal case initially filed again Dquan Doyle, a former juvenile detention officer charged in June. Doyle’s charges were dismissed after a witness chose not to cooperate with prosecutors, they said. Doyle’s attorney said the dismissal went beyond that, arguing that alleged CashApp transfers between Doyle and juveniles simply did not occur.
Jurisdiction central to several Indian Law cases
As has been the case every year since the 2020 McGirt v. Oklahoma decision affirmed tribal sovereignty — and ensuing Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta decision in some ways limited it — 2024 was a contentious year in the courts for issues of Indian Law. Ongoing cases that call legal jurisdiction into question include:
- Two cases involving Matthew Joseph Douglas, who was charged with assaulting a tribal police officer by the Muscogee Nation, have seen little movement the past few months. Attorney General Gentner Drummond sued in federal court, arguing the tribe lacked criminal jurisdiction over Douglas, who is not a tribal citizen. Douglas’ criminal case in tribal court is on hold while the federal case is pending. Magistrate Judge D. Edward Snow has not ruled on a motion to dismiss in the federal case for more than six months;
- Keith Stitt, Gov. Kevin Stitt’s brother and a Cherokee Nation citizen, appealed his Tulsa Municipal Court traffic case to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, arguing the city lacked criminal jurisdiction over him for speeding within the Muscogee Nation’s Reservation. The U.S. Department of Justice intervened to support Stitt, and the Five Tribes — the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee and Seminole nations — all filed amicus briefs arguing the city lacked criminal jurisdiction. Since Stitt’s appeal, the Court of Criminal Appeals held in a separate case that the City of Tulsa does have criminal jurisdiction over non-member tribal citizens who commit crimes within the city. Complicating jurisdictional matters further, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit against District Attorney Matt Ballard and District Attorney Carol Iski for prosecuting tribal citizens for crimes committed within a reservation. Stitt’s case is still pending before the court;
- Stroble v. Oklahoma Tax Commission, a case over whether Oklahoma has income tax jurisdiction over tribal citizens who live on their nation’s reservation and work for their tribe, is still pending before the Oklahoma Supreme Court after oral arguments were held in January 2024. The controversial case has become a talking point in debates over whether to eliminate the state’s income tax entirely;
- Paul Lucas v. Paul Craven, a case over whether state courts have jurisdiction to adjudicate eviction cases involving tribal citizens who live on their tribe’s reservation, had its appellate record filed Jan. 6. The Oklahoma Supreme Court took up the family dispute, which will likely become an important precedent on civil jurisdiction in the eastern portion of the state, last year. More briefs will likely be filed in the case in the next few months; and
- Muscogee Nation v. City of Tulsa, a suit filed over the city’s continued prosecution of tribal citizens in municipal court, may be nearing its end. While a federal judge pointed to the suit as functionally a continuation of the Hooper v. Tulsa litigation, the case has languished for more than a year in federal court with little movement beyond more than a dozen prisoners attempting to intervene in the case. Settlement negotiations are currently ongoing between the two parties with the litigation on hold until March 18, and Mayor Monroe Nichols told Verified News Network in an interview the city would “refer those (criminal case) to those tribal courts as [the] process going forward.”
A legal battle in Muscogee Nation District Court over the citizenship status of Muscogee Freedmen, the descendants of former slaves owned by Muscogee citizens prior to the Civil War, will also continue into the new year. The conflict over whether or not Freedmen descendants should have tribal citizenship has morphed into two separate cases:
- Citizenship Board of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation v. Grayson, a case on appeal in front of the Muscogee Supreme Court after a district court judge ruled the nation must admit freedmen’s descendants as citizens, is on hold alongside every other Muscogee Nation Supreme Court appeal while the court hears a case involving a special judge law; and
- In the Matter of the Constitutionality of NCA 24-077 is the case over the constitutionality of the Muscogee Nation’s special judge law. While oral arguments were originally scheduled for Jan. 10, a blanket of snow postponed the proceedings until Friday, Feb. 21.
The case of an Osage County wind farm, operated by Italian multinational energy company Enel, has continued into the new year after the farm was found to violate the rights of the Osage Nation. The case is on appeal after the company was ordered to pay millions of dollars and remove 84 wind turbines. The wind farm did not acquire mining permits before mining rock from its lease site for use in building the foundation for the wind turbines. Under the Osage Tribe Allotment Act of 1906, the rights to subsurface oil, gas and other minerals are collectively owned by the Osage Nation and managed by the Osage Mineral Council. The company was ordered to pay more than $300,000 to the United States and the Osage Mineral Council, to pay more than $3 million in attorneys fees and to remove the 84 turbines by Dec. 1, 2025. That removal cost is estimated to exceed $200 million. Enel has appealed the order and filed to delay the removal deadline. Briefs on the motion to stay are due by Tuesday, Feb. 18.
Other cases continuing into 2025
With a judge shortage in Oklahoma’s federal district courts and the Oklahoma Supreme Court short a justice, some cases in Oklahoma have proceeded at a glacial pace. Recently, the Oklahoma Supreme Court thawed out the long-pending Donaldson v. City of El Reno for a precedential ruling about sex offender residency requirements.
Meanwhile, the saga of Scott Sapulpa, a former football coach who successfully sued Gannett — the nation’s largest newspaper company — for erroneously identifying him in an article as the speaker of a racial slur during a high school basketball game, continues as Sapulpa waits on two appeals from Gannett to wrap up before potentially cashing in a $25 million payday. The appeals were filed as two companion cases, one of which argues the judge erred in awarding such high punitive damages, while the other argues a litany of points, including the claim there was “no evidence of actual malice” and “Sapulpa failed to prove the article caused any emotional harm.”
One case you will not likely hear about in the new year is that of Mikayla Kassandra Moreau, a mother charged with child neglect for allegedly consuming THC products with a medical license during her pregnancy. Moreau saw the dismissal of her criminal charges affirmed by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals after the court decided State v. Aguilar. The Aguilar case held marijuana use with a license during pregnancy was not “illegal drug” use under Oklahoma law.
From a former mayoral candidate’s attorneys firing their client, to a fugitive at large and to a triple-charged Navajo citizen, a few continuing court cases have ventured fairly far afield into the category of weird.
Casey Bradford, a candidate for Tulsa mayor in 2024 who placed a distant fourth, appears to have violated his settlement agreement with the Oklahoma Department of Health, according to a withdrawal notice from his former attorneys. The withdrawal notes Bradford stopped paying the state pursuant to his settlement agreement.
In an exception to the Fifth Amendment to the Fifth Amendment prohibition on double jeopardy, Brayden Bull, a Navajo citizen, faced prosecution in three separate courts for the same crime. The separate sovereign exception typically allows federal and state prosecution for the same crime, but in Bull’s case, the Cherokee Nation also charged him, leading to three different legal proceedings:
- In federal court, Bull was sentenced to 50 years in federal prison by Judge John D. Russell last October for aggravated sexual abuse of a minor under age 12 in Indian country, production of child pornography, and the receipt and production of child pornography;
- In state court, Rogers County District Attorney Matt Ballard’s office filed a request for Bull to be transferred to state custody in November. Ballard’s office was sued in December by the U.S. Department of Justice for bringing charges against tribal citizens for crimes committed in Indian country, including in Bull’s case;
- In Cherokee Nation District Court, District Judge Amy Page dismissed the Cherokee Nation’s criminal case against Bull without prejudice the day after his sentencing in federal court.
One last legal oddity is the case of Billy Zane Deo, the namesake of a controversial Indian law decision by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, whose current whereabouts harken back to the days of the Wild West. Deo appears to remain at large based on an open arrest warrant in Okfuskee County. While the OCCA ruled that state courts theoretically retained criminal jurisdiction over Deo, a Muscogee Nation citizen who allegedly committed his crimes within the Muscogee Nation Reservation, the exercising of that jurisdiction does require him to be present in court.
