Tribe Elders Meet to Decide Youths’ Fate

Viewed by some as a noble experiment in American justice and by others as an elaborate con job, a 12-member tribal court of Tlingit elders met in a remote southeast Alaskan fishing village Thursday to decide the fate of two 17-year-olds returned to their community by a Washington state court.

Among the tribal court’s decisions will be where and how to mete out a penalty of banishment to the pair, who savagely beat a Seattle-area pizza deliveryman last year--as well as how the youths and the tribe will make amends to the victim. The unusual hearing is likely to last through today.

The case of Simon P. Roberts and Adrian J. Guthrie, who pleaded guilty to robbing Tim Whittlesey of $50 and beating him with a baseball bat in Everett, Wash., garnered widespread attention when a Superior Court judge agreed to a novel, perhaps unprecedented, arrangement. Instead of sending the teen-agers to prison for 2 1/2 to 5 1/2 years, Judge James Allendoerfer said that he would postpone sentencing for 18 months.

During that time, Tlingit elders in southeast Alaska would supervise a supposedly traditional punishment of exile to uninhabited islands and restitution to the victim. The defense argued that an overwhelmed judicial system could never provide this kind of victim assistance and chance at rehabilitation. Allendoerfer agreed, ordering the pair back to his court in March, 1996, when he will decide whether more punishment is needed.

The proposal was the creation of Rudy James, a Tlingit native now living in the Seattle area. With a public defender, he argued that banishment was an ancient, purifying punishment known to the Tlingits. An anthropologist testified that in Tlingit culture, “restoration of peace included the banishment of the offender for such a time as the crime demanded.”

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James, a member of a Tlingit tribal court, also said that the community would assume responsibility for paying restitution to the victim, possibly in the form of a new house or in cash. Whittlesey, 25, suffered a concussion in the attack and his hearing is permanently damaged. He and his wife are attending the tribal proceedings in Klawock, Alaska, having traveled there with James and the two convicts.

But Allendoerfer’s decision came under fire from some Snohomish County prosecutors, land managers in Alaska and Tlingit officials, who denied that James or the tribal court had any authority to speak for the Klawock Cooperative Assn., the federally recognized body of the Tlingits. Association President Roseann Demmert said: “I think recognition needs to be given to traditional ways. I just don’t like the way this was done.”

Meanwhile, residents of Klawock and other Tlingits say that they have never heard of banishment as a method of punishment. Other reports say James owes thousands of dollars to several in the Tlingit community, where he and his family are sometimes called the “James Gang.”

Federal authorities say they have been approached by tribal officials about the prospect of placing the teen-agers on islands under their management. “We have serious doubts about whether we could actually do this,” said district ranger Greg Griffith of the U.S. Forest Service. He said land holdings of several native corporations in the area would be more suitable. The proposed locale of the banishment areas has not been made public.

Snohomish County prosecutor Jim Townsend predicted that Guthrie and Roberts will flee to Canada, and eventually will be extradited back to Washington state at taxpayer expense. “Rudy James is controlling the whole show, and that’s a bad omen,” he said. Prosecutors have filed an appeal, but don’t expect it to be taken up for at least six weeks.