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• Federal authorities have "really stepped up trying to improve criminal justice in Indian Country and ensure public safety," said Leonhard of the Umatilla Tribe's Office of Legal Counsel.
• Still, nearly 2,000 cases were declined for prosecution, a matter for which the DOJ has been criticized in the past.
• "There are cases that are legitimately declined, and that is appropriate and expected," said Leonhard.
• The DOJ's report shows that the matters declined in 2011 and 2012 were mostly because of insufficient evidence. Rates for individual states varied widely -- from Montana, where 52 percent of cases were turned down, to Arizona, where 20 percent were declined over the two years.
• Federal prosecutors, however, don't measure their performance in Indian Country by declination statistics. Instead, they point to the relationships they've built with tribal police, investigators, prosecutors and community members.
• Federal prosecutors also have ventured out to Indian Country more often to discuss ways to combat crime, training police officers to become federally certified and bringing on state-bar certified tribal prosecutors as special assistant U.S. attorneys.
• "If anything we get way too caught up in looking at the numbers," said Patrick Schneider, tribal liaison for the U.S. attorney's office in Arizona. "Declinations is not a really good number to look at to find out whether we're doing a good job or not."
• Grant Walker, tribal prosecutor on the Standing Rock Reservation in North and South Dakota since 2009, said he doesn't put a lot of stock into declination rates because he talks to federal prosecutors on a regular basis.
• The DOJ's declination rate includes cases referred to and prosecuted in tribal courts, where sentences can go beyond the traditional maximum penalty of one year in jail if certain provisions are met under federal law.
• "Declinations aren't really a big deal anymore to us because we know what the case is, and if the federal government declines we've already had a chance to prosecute that case too," Walker said. "So it's not like the ball is hidden, and the prosecution's office doesn't know about it."
• Purdon cited a drug trafficking case on the Standing Rock Reservation dubbed "Operation Prairie Thunder," in which 12 people were indicted in federal and five in Standing Rock tribal court. Purdon said that while the tribal cases were subtracted from their prosecution record, it showed unprecedented cooperation and could lead to long-term success.
• Former Standing Rock Tribal Judge Bill Zuger, who retired last year after six years on the bench, said that case was the product of federal prosecutors showing interest and building up trust with tribal law enforcement. Until recently, Zuger said

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