Mille Lacs Band court awards $4.3M for gang-related beating

Thursday, June 16, 2011  

A member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Indians in Minnesota has been awarded nearly $4.3 million in tribal court.

Cody St. John, 26, was attacked on the reservation in February 2006. He was severely beaten and left outside in below-zero temperatures because he refused to join the Vice Lords gang.

"Gang activity up on the reservation has been a chronic problem for years. The increasing violence up there has gotten to a point where [St. John] said we've just got to do something," attorney Patrick Noaker told The Minneapolis Star Tribune.

St. John did something -- he sued his attacker, Keith Wayne Reynolds, 24, who pleaded guilty to third-degree assault and served a year and one day in jail for the crime. The tribe's court awarded him $1.038 million for past and future physical injuries and medical bills, $250,000 for mental injury and $3 million in punitive damages, the paper reported.

Noaker said St. John probably won't ever recover the full amount but noted that the tribe could probably garnish Reynolds' per capita payment.

Get the Story:
Mille Lacs Tribal Court awards $4.2M in beating case (The Minneapolis Star Tribune 6/16)