A group of silent protesters lined the entrance of the Cherokee Justice Center on Sept. 29 as Curtis Cochran made a brief appearance in tribal court for his ongoing sexual assault case.
Many held homemade signs inscribed with messages such as “Hold Predators Accountable” and “No More Silence.” Some wore a painted red handprint over their mouths, a symbol of solidarity within the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement.
Qualla Boundary MMIW, the local chapter associated with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, organized the demonstration.
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“Although one man is on trial, the system that turned a blind eye has failed the people of Swain County and the broader community,” the group said in a statement.
“We gather in silence because our stillness is our power and our presence is our resistance.”
Cochran, the former sheriff of Swain County, faces dual prosecutions in tribal court and state court for assaults he’s alleged to have committed on Cherokee land, known as the Qualla Boundary. One of the victims named in court documents is an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. Two others are not.
Officers with the State Bureau of Investigation and the Cherokee Indian Police arrested Cochran on June 27. District Attorney Ashley Hornsby Welch filed a petition to remove him from office soon after his arrest, but Cochran announced his retirement before it could proceed in court. Cochran had been Swain County’s top law enforcement official since 2006.
Shannon Swimmer, a former tribal court judge and director of the Cherokee Center at Western Carolina University, spoke with Carolina Public Press about the significance of the case. Swimmer was elected to a spot on the Eastern Band’s Tribal Council last month and participated in Monday’s silent protest, the Cherokee One Feather reported.
“It’s significant for me personally, as a Cherokee woman, to be able to see someone who has allegations of violating an enrolled member’s rights, that they’re able to be brought to justice,” she told CPP.
The Eastern Band is able to bring criminal charges in tribal court against Cochran, who is not a member of the tribe, through Congress’s reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 2022. That federal law expanded recognized tribes’ authority to prosecute certain crimes committed by nonenrolled members against Indigenous victims.
“I’m happy that it is properly before the court because of VAWA,” Swimmer said. “I have faith that justice will take its course.”
For more than 40 years, tribes were powerless to hold nonenrolled perpetrators accountable because of the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court decision Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, which held that tribal courts lacked jurisdiction without congressional authorization.
The Eastern Band’s prosecution of Cochran is one of the first examples in North Carolina of a recognized tribe exercising that authority.
Cochran is charged with two counts of oppression in office, which is defined in the Cherokee Code as “acting or purporting to act in an official capacity … to subject another to arrest, detention, search, seizure, mistreatment, dispossession, assessment, lien or infringement of personal or property rights.”
According to Cochran’s arrest warrants, as well as the petition for his removal from office, Cochran had picked up at least two women on the Qualla Boundary in his law enforcement vehicle under the guise of giving them rides home. Once in his SUV, Cochran sexually assaulted the women, the court filings alleged.
The accuser in one of the oppression in office charges, like Cochran, is not Cherokee. Normally, that circumstance wouldn’t allow for the Eastern Band to pursue criminal charges in tribal court, but there’s an exception in the Violence Against Women Act that allows for a tribe to prosecute a crime between two non-Indians if it involves obstruction of justice.
The crime of “oppression in office” is considered obstruction of justice in the Cherokee Code. It’s punishable by imprisonment for up to one year, a maximum fine of $5,000 and a ban from public office.
Cochran is also charged with one count of abusive sexual contact against a Cherokee woman. The possible sentencing for that crime is not laid out in the Cherokee Code.
CPP reached out to lead tribal prosecutor Leo Phillips and interim Attorney General Mike McConnell to clarify the punishment that his office is pursuing in the case, but via email they declined to comment “out of respect for the court process.”
Cochran faces state criminal charges for second-degree rape, sexual battery, assault on a female, felonious restraint and soliciting prostitution. Some of those charges stem from the same incidents that also led to his prosecution in tribal court. The Eastern Band’s inherent sovereignty recognized by the United States makes it so that there’s no issue of double jeopardy.
Cochran last appeared in Swain County court on Sept. 24. His next appearance there is scheduled for Dec. 17.
His next appearance in Cherokee tribal court is scheduled for Feb. 17, 2026. Qualla Boundary MMIW intends to stage another silent demonstration when that happens, according to its Facebook page.
Swimmer told CPP she hopes that the statewide interest this case has garnered will raise awareness about the outsized rates of violence that Indigenous women face and serve as an example that anyone who commits a crime on tribal land, regardless of who they are, can and will face justice.
“I hope that the attention that’s on this, that what comes from it is the demand for more accountability,” she said.
“Because with accountability, we can bring justice.”
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