With the charges dropped, Archie LaRose plans to seek certification to run for office in next year’s election for secretary-treasurer. Courtesy photo.
In a legal saga that highlights the complex, sometimes muddled interplay between state and tribal jurisprudence, a longtime elected official of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe has succeeded in overturning a three-decade-old criminal conviction that upended his political career.
Following a favorable ruling from the Minnesota Court of Appeals, the Cass County Attorney in December formally dismissed a 1992 third-degree assault case against the band’s former secretary-treasurer, Arthur “Archie” LaRose.
With the charges dropped, LaRose now plans to seek certification to run for office in next year’s election for secretary-treasurer, the second most powerful post on the 10,000-strong member reservation in north central Minnesota.
“Legally, I’m clean,” an ebullient LaRose told the Reformer. “My lawyer told me, ‘Archie, you’ve never been convicted of anything. You have a clean record.’”
LaRose, 53, served for 18 years on the tribal council, mainly as secretary-treasurer and for one term as chairman. All told, he was certified as a candidate for tribal office 10 times since his first campaign in 2000.
That changed in 2022 when his opponent in the secretary-treasurer contest challenged LaRose’s eligibility based on a 1992 conviction for third degree assault, which is a felony.
Under a 2006 election ordinance enacted by the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe — the umbrella entity that governs six Ojibwe reservations in northern Minnesota — candidates who have been convicted of felonies are barred. (Broadly speaking, this is the opposite of the system that prevails in the United States, where felons, including the sitting president, can hold office but often cannot vote. While the MCT prohibits felons from running for tribal office, felons are permitted to vote in tribal elections, even when behind bars.)
The “felon ordinance” had an immediate impact at Leech Lake. In 2006, shortly after its passage, three band members went to Leech Lake Tribal Court in an effort to unseat then-chairman George Goggleye on the grounds of his two past assault convictions.
In denying the petition, Leech Lake Tribal Court Chief Judge Korey Wahwassuck noted that Goggleye’s convictions had both been officially “deemed a misdemeanor” following his successful completion of probation. Therefore, the judge concluded, Goggleye remained eligible to hold office.
LaRose, it was noted at the time, was in the same boat.
As with Goggleye, LaRose’s plea bargain called for a stay of imposition and, after he successfully completed probation, his crime was deemed a misdemeanor. This has been a common outcome with certain felonies under Minnesota law since the state enacted its modern criminal code in 1963. The reform was rooted in the notion that it is sometimes best to reduce the collateral consequences of a felony record.
After the tribe’s felon ordinance went into effect, LaRose said, he was certified to run for office seven times.
An opponent cites legal precedent and LaRose is stricken
In the 2022 challenge, Leonard “Lenny” Fineday — LaRose’s opponent in the secretary-treasurer race and an attorney — pointed to a line of Minnesota Supreme Court decisions in which the court has held that a felony conviction deemed a misdemeanor still counts as a felony in some contexts.
In the most recent of those decisions, State v. S.A.M from 2017, a divided court ruled that a defendant who pleaded guilty to felony burglary could not seek to have his record expunged, despite the fact that his conviction was subsequently converted to a misdemeanor.
In a three-page order filed one week after Fineday brought his challenge, the MCT Tribal Election Court of Appeals cited S.A.M, as well as other Minnesota case law, and barred LaRose’s candidacy. “Mr. LaRose was ‘convicted’ of a felony in 1992,” the five-judge panel wrote. “His criminal record now reflects that his felony conviction is deemed a misdemeanor but that does not change the fact that Mr. LaRose was at one time convicted of a felony.”
With the ruling, LaRose’s name was stricken from the ballot, and Fineday —now running unopposed — was elected secretary-treasurer.
In his quest to return to overturn that decision, LaRose has sought relief from the U.S. District Court of Minnesota, the Leech Lake Tribal Court, and the MCT’s Tribal Executive Committee, a body on which LaRose long served in his capacity as Leech Lake’s secretary-treasurer. None of his efforts bore fruit.
But a longshot appeal in state court did.
In November, the Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed LaRose’s 1992 conviction on the grounds that his guilty plea to third degree assault did not satisfy a basic legal threshold.
While LaRose acknowledged that he “assaulted” the victim and inflicted injuries that were “substantial,” the record does not contain any information showing that LaRose inflicted injuries constituting “substantial bodily harm” as the term is defined in statute,” wrote Judge Michelle Larkin. “Given the lack of any record in evidence describing the injuries inflicted on the victim, LaRose has met his burden to show that his guilty plea…was inaccurate and invalid. His guilty plea therefore constitutes a manifest injustice.”
It did not hurt LaRose’s case that Cass County Attorney Benjamin Lindstrom did not oppose LaRose’s bid to withdraw his guilty plea.
“The allegations in this case are over 30 years old. Given this passage of time, certain evidence related to the case is no longer available, making it now impossible to prove guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” Lindstrom explained in a court filing. “Furthermore, despite the invalid nature of his guilty plea and its manifest injustice…the defendant nonetheless served a jail sanction and successfully completed the court ordered sentence. He has no further criminal history of substance. Revival of a 30 plus year old prosecution in this context would not be in the interest of justice.”
For his part, LaRose said he only took the plea bargain because he was convinced that it meant he would not have a felony on his record.
According to a redacted version of the criminal complaint, LaRose was originally charged with nine felonies after he and two associates tracked down and beat a man who stole a TV from LaRose’s Cass Lake home.
“This was over my house being burglarized. I found out who did it and tried to get my stuff back. That’s all it was, a minor fight. It should have been disorderly conduct or a misdemeanor,” said LaRose. “The fact is, I was a young man who didn’t understand my rights. I didn’t know the court system. If I would have known, it would have never gotten this far.”
In the end, LaRose spent 40 days in jail, was fined $300 and placed on five years probation. (Following the dismissal of the charges, LaRose said, the fine was returned, with interest).
Frank Bibeau, an attorney who has represented LaRose in various matters in tribal and federal court but not in the 1992 criminal proceeding, said he has little doubt that LaRose was overcharged. According to Bibeau, the victim in the case, who is not identified in court documents, is the son of a former Cass County sheriff’s deputy.
Further wrangling ahead?
Legally, Bibeau said, the state appeals court’s decision means that LaRose ought to be eligible for tribal office. But, he said, that doesn’t mean there won’t be further wrangling.
“I don’t think it’s over. I think Lenny Fineday will make a challenge. It’s the only way he can beat Archie,” said Bibeau, who noted that LaRose has long been among the top vote getters at Leech Lake. “I’m sure Lenny is going to say, ‘Hey, he was convicted of a felony.’ But if the phrase ‘if ever convicted of a felony’ is going to include wrongful convictions, then we’ve got real problems.”
Fineday did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Irene Folstrom, a band member who served as Leech Lake’s government relations manager at the time of LaRose’s certification fight and who has known both LaRose and Fineday since childhood, thinks that LaRose ought to be permitted to run again. LaRose’s removal from the ballot — and the absence of any choice — struck many Leech Lake voters as unfair, she added.
“The decision will ultimately be up to the five Election Court of Appeals judges selected by the Tribal Executive Committee of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe,” Folstrom said. “I think it will be difficult for them to find any sound legal reasoning to find him ineligible to be certified as a candidate now that the conviction has been vacated by the state, but I’ve been around tribal politics my entire life and I’ve seen some crazy stuff. So who knows what’s going to happen.”
For his part, LaRose said the members of the Tribal Executive Committee have all sworn an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution. Under U.S. jurisprudence, he added, there are no grounds for treating him as a felon.
“If these guys abide by the law and follow the election ordinance, I’m just as good as anyone,” LaRose said.