State Courts and Federal Are Separate
Video Transcribed: What is a stay? Hi, my name is Ryan Cannonie. I’m an attorney in Tahlequah, and a thing that’s come up in these reservation cases that have been all over the news and dominated Oklahoma, at least Eastern Oklahoma landscape, for about the past year now is the concept of a stay. Now, a stay is also just another word for when a court puts things on hold when they pause all proceedings involving either a certain case or a certain type of topic.
Now, if you are involved in any of the McGirt, Hogner, Bosse, Sizemore, any of these type of reservation cases, you should probably be familiar with stay already, because there’s been several of them issued throughout the timeline of these cases.
Every time there’s a new issue brought up on appeal, meaning that your county courts are considered your trial courts, the lower courts. Then you can go up to your appellate courts and then you can go up to federal courts.
Your state courts and federal are separate there, but depending on your issue, you may appeal through your state or you may appeal through your federal system. And so depending on where your appeal is at, that’s the appellate court making decisions on your case and possibly on that topic.
So as of right now, and I know this may date this video, but there is currently a stay in place on the post-conviction relief aspect of many of these reservation cases.
And what I mean by that is where Native American citizens are trying to get their cases dismissed when they’ve already been convicted, to go back and get rid of their conviction. There has been a stay put on those until there are more decisions coming down on that.
Now, when there is a stay, as your attorney I can tell you there’s a stay. I can’t tell you what that’s going to mean. I can’t predict the future, none of us can, as to what the courts are going to do. We can say we think it’s going to go this way, or we have a feeling this way, but there’s no way we can know. We’re guessing.
So in a lot of these cases, when there’s a stay, it’s important to realize that there’s nothing I, as your attorney, can do to make things move faster. It’s all up to the judges. It’s all up to the higher courts. And is it frustrating?
Yes, it is incredibly frustrating, not just to you, but to us as attorneys, because we have cases that continually go from one court date to another court date to another court date, just waiting on these decisions to come down so we know what way the court’s going to go on this and what to do.
So if you are involved in one of these cases, if you have questions about these cases, then please give us a call. Let us know if you have questions about what a stay is. If you have questions about how it may impact your ability to file a post-conviction relief case, then please let us know. We can talk to you. If you haven’t filed anything yet or if you’re maybe filed it on your own and you want someone else to look over your paperwork, then let us know. We can help.
