A man convicted in 2006 of killing his toddler daughter is asking a federal court to reverse his murder conviction, saying a recent U.S. Supreme Court case supports his claims that he was prosecuted in the wrong jurisdiction.
Andrew Yellowbear Jr. was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2006 for abusing and murdering his 22-month-old daughter Marcella Yellowbear. The girl died July 2, 2004 after weeks of torture in a Riverton apartment.
Because the crime occurred in Riverton, Yellowbear was convicted in state, not federal court. He has filed multiple appeals arguing that the Wind River Indian Reservation abutting the town should include Riverton within its borders, based on the 1868 Treaty between the Shoshone Tribes and the federal government.
Therefore, Yellowbear has argued, he was convicted in the wrong court and should be freed.
Courts have rebutted Yellowbear’s prior appeals by deferring to the Surplus Land Act of 1905, a new treaty that diminished the boundaries of the reservation and placed the town of Riverton under state, not tribal and federal, jurisdiction.
But this time, Yellowbear’s bid for freedom cites McGirt vs. Oklahoma – a 2020 Supreme Court case that raised the standards for reviewing historical agreements in which tribes have given up portions of reservation lands to other entities.
McGirt re-established the Muscogee Nation in Oklahoma, barring state police and prosecutors from enforcing state laws within its borders and relegating law enforcement instead to tribal and federal authorities, depending on the offense.
In His Own Hand
Yellowbear is representing himself in his appeal. A perpetual litigant, he has sued or petitioned for various concessions and appeals more than a dozen times throughout his imprisonment in the Wyoming Department of Corrections.
Yellowbear wrote in his most recent petition that in 2008 he was given a new sentencing document with just one felony-murder conviction, instead of the original four, several months after his actual sentencing. He asserted that with the altered sentencing terms, he should have been given a new sentencing hearing and a chance to argue for a lesser punishment before a judge.
Felony murder is a variant of first-degree murder punishable by life in prison with or without parole, or the death penalty. Felony murder is a murder that occurs in the course of another felony, such as child abuse.
Yellowbear wrote that the court should consider his appeal again because it refers to the newer sentencing terms, rather than the older ones.
He asked the court to “review anew… jurisdictional claims” in light of the McGirt standards.
Innumerable Abrasions
When she died on July 2, 2004, court documents state, Yellowbear’s daughter Marcella Hope Yellowbear was 22 months old, and riddled with “innumerable abrasions, wounds, burns, and broken bones.”
The cause of her death was deemed “repetitive, abusive, blunt-force injuries,” and the manner of death was homicide.
