United States v. Corrow
United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
119 F.3d 796 (1997)
Richard Corrow (defendant), a cultural-artifacts dealer, bought ceremonial masks used by a deceased Navajo religious singer from the singer's widow for $10,000, falsely assuring her he would return the masks to a Navajo chanter to keep them sacred, then tried to resell them for $70,000 to an undercover federal agent. The government charged Corrow under 18 U.S.C. section 1170(b) and the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) for trafficking in cultural patrimony -- items that cannot be sold or alienated by an individual tribal member. At trial, experts disagreed on some details of the masks' alienability, but none testified it was acceptable to sell them to non-Navajos for resale profit, and all agreed the masks belonged within the tribe's sacred lands; evidence also showed Corrow knew about NAGPRA and Navajo return procedures. A jury convicted Corrow, who argued on appeal that the statute's definition of 'cultural patrimony' was unconstitutionally vague.
Whether a federal statute prohibiting the sale of Native American cultural patrimony is unconstitutionally vague as applied to a dealer who knowingly purchased and resold sacred tribal items for profit.