Smoke signals., December 01, 2025, Image 13

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DECEMBER 1, 2025
13
Appeals court reverses Cherry decision
By Nicole Montesano
Smoke Signals staff writer
A Tribal Appeals Court panel has
reversed the Tribal Court’s decision
acquitting former Spirit Mountain
Casino Marketing Manager Chris
Cherry of violating a Tribal ordi-
nance prohibiting use of Tribal
resources to solicit or distribute
election campaign materials.
The appellate court sent the case
back to the lower court to reconsid-
er, asking it to “affi rm or dismiss
the citation in a written opinion
that sets out its analysis.”
The original trial was held in
March of this year and the verdict
was appealed by the Tribe.
In mid-August 2024, Cherry
was cited under the Tribal Public
Safety Ordinance for violating its
campaign provision, which bars
using Tribal resources to solicit
or distribute campaign materials.
It carries a maximum penalty of
a $50 fi ne and is a civil ordinance
violation.
Cherry was accused of having
used Tribal resources to print cam-
paign material for his wife, Michael
Cherry, who was running for reelec-
tion to Tribal Council. Chris Cherry
testifi ed that Michael Cherry never
directed him to produce any cam-
paign materials through his work
and was unaware of his effort to
correct the proofs. Michael Cherry
was not cited in the incident. She
lost her 2024 reelection bid and
Chris Cherry is no longer employed
by the casino.
The Cherrys said at the time,
they believed the complaint and so-
cial media allegations were tactics
to undermine her campaign.
Tribal Police Chief Jake McK-
night, whose department investi-
gated the incident and issued the
citation, said, “I want to make clear
that we don’t get involved with
political decisions whatsoever; we
base our decisions on facts. … Our
actions had nothing to do with a
political stance; it was all based off
facts we collected at the time of the
incident.”
McKnight added, “I have a lot of
respect for the Cherry family,” not-
ing that he has known them most of
his life. “We’re just doing our jobs.”
Chris Cherry did not respond to
a request for comment.
His attorney, Dori Brattain,
argued that Cherry’s actions were
no different than someone printing
out a recipe for personal use. She
said Cherry had merely spent a few
minutes checking the “visual acu-
ity” of the campaign banners after
the vendor complained they were
not printing correctly, then made a
few corrections before emailing the
fi le back to himself and returning
it to the vendor.
“He was looking at the acuity on
his work computer for those six
minutes,” Brattain said. “He print-
ed it out to see what it looked like
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and that was the end of his use. The
material that he printed to look at
was not used for distribution and it
was not used for solicitation. And
I believe that is what the fi nding
of the lower court was and the evi-
dence supports that.”
Prosecutor and Tribal Senior
Staff Attorney Brooks Wakeland
argued to the appellate court that
Cherry had taken advantage of
his access to resources that other
candidates did not have.
“So, while you might hear an ar-
gument that other people used the
printers and used their computers
to print out recipes or concert tick-
ets or anything else, that may be a
violation of employment policy here
at the Tribe, but it’s certainly not
enacted in the Tribal law,” Wake-
land told the appellate court panel,
noting that such uses are relatively
trivial in the eyes of the law.
“However, when we’re talking
about Tribal elections, that cuts to
the very integrity and the core of
Tribal sovereignty, and the Tribe
enacted this ordinance in order to
assure that those are fair,” Wake-
land said. “And so, when you have
an employee who uses resources
such as marketing software, com-
puters that aren’t available to
anyone else, printers that aren’t
available to anyone else, a contact
that he knew from his time in
marketing … That’s the very defi -
nition of using Tribal resources to
solicit campaign materials, which
is what is expressly outlined in the
ordinance.”
He argued that if Cherry had
been able to make the corrections
on his home computer, he would
have done so.
Wakeland said the fact that
Cherry had used his work computer
and printer to develop materials
that he then, on his own time, had
printed and distributed around the
Tribal campus, meant that he had
violated the ban on solicitation and
distribution.
“If it wasn’t for his access to these
Tribal resources, he would not
have been able to either solicit or
distribute these images, and that’s
the problem,” Wakeland said.
Wakeland argued that Tribal
Court Chief Judge Patrick Melendy
erred in issuing his verdict that
Cherry “did not solicit and distrib-
ute,” noting that the ordinance
says “to solicit or distribute election
campaign materials.”
Brattain argued that Melendy
had considered both words sepa-
rately.
“I think the lower court did weigh
the evidence on distributing, that
it looked at also the solicitation
portion of the ordinance and found
that there was neither,” she said. “I
guess I would rephrase it this way,
if I was to break it down; that the
trial court said he did not solicit and
he did not distribute.”
Wakeland said he disagreed.
“The judge states ‘It’s my job
today to decide whether or not Mr.
Cherry solicited and distributed
campaign materials using Tribal
resources.’ He was very clear,”
Wakeland said.
Appellate judges Robert J. Miller,
Patricia Paul and Patricia Davis
concurred, writing in their ruling
that “the court improperly amend-
ed the language of the ordinance …
We reverse the trial court’s decision
dismissing the citation. We remand
this case to that court to apply the
ordinance as written and to affi rm
or dismiss the citation in a written
opinion that sets out its analysis.”
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