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• "Having the ability to do it local and have the prosecution start soon after the offense, that's just going to be great for our victims," said Fred Urbina, chief prosecutor for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe in southern Arizona.
• Officers there are certified under state and federal law, which allows them to ar

rest non-Indians, but the cases aren't handled at the tribal level. The Pascua Yaqui Tribe also has banished some non-Indians from the reservation for criminal activity.
• "It's almost like a patchwork of things we've been able to employ to fix that jurisdictional void," Urbina said. "It's not satisfactory in all cases."
• Under the new law, a non-Indian defendant would have the right to a jury trial that is drawn from a cross-section of the community and doesn't systematically exclude non-Indians or other distinctive groups. The protections would equal those in state or federal court, including the right to a public defender, a judge who is licensed to practice law, a recording of the proceedings and published laws and rules of criminal procedure.

• "This is not scary. It's not radical," said Troy Eid, former U.S. attorney in Colorado. "It's very much in keeping with what we have as local governments."
• The safeguards are similar to those in the federal Tribal Law and Order Act, passed in 2010 to improve public safety on tribal lands.
• About 30 tribes across the country are working toward a provision that allows them to increase sentencing from one year to three years, leaving them well-positioned to take authority over non-Indians in criminal matters, Eid said.
• Jefferson Keel, president of the National Congress of American Indians, said in a statement that much work remains to be done to ensure tribal members are protected from domestic violence. But he said Thursday's bill signing represents a "historic moment in the nation-to-nation relationships" between tribes and the federal government.
• "Today is a great day, because it marks the beginning of justice and the end to injustice that has gone unanswered for too long," Keel said.
•

• PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- Republicans and Democrats in South Dakota worked for two months to find a compromise to help the state better compete in luring both large and small projects.
• Lawmakers on Thursday advanced a comprehensive bipartisan economic development plan meant to recruit projects to the state. To get it going, the lawmakers pledged $7 million to kick-start the Building South Dakota fund.

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