Andrew John Yellowbear Jr. facts for kids
Andrew John Yellowbear Jr. (born September 5, 1974) was the defendant in one of Wyoming's most notorious capital murder trials. He was convicted in April 2006 in Thermopolis, Wyoming, of premeditated first-degree murder in the death of his 22-month-old daughter Marcela Hope Yellowbear. He was subsequently sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Post-trial legal proceedings
After he was convicted, Yellowbear filed a petition in United States District Court for the District of Wyoming seeking to set aside the conviction on the grounds that only tribal and federal courts, rather than the state courts of Wyoming, had jurisdiction over the case. His petition was supported by the Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes. Both Yellowbear and Blackburn are members of the Northern Arapaho tribe, which shares the Wind River Indian Reservation with the Eastern Shoshone.
Yellowbear's lawyers argued for the venue change because the crime took place in Riverton, an incorporated city that is landlocked by an Indian reservation. Trials of felonies by American Indians within the boundaries of a reservation are heard in federal district court, while misdemeanors are heard in the respective tribal courts of the reservation in which a particular crime occurred.
In 2008, Yellowbear filed a lawsuit against the Wyoming Department of Corrections claiming the state violated his constitutional rights by depriving him of ten bald eagle feathers for use in religious ceremonies. In late July 2008, Judge Alan Bond Johnson of the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming approved a settlement allowing Yellowbear to get four eagle feathers.
