Cite as: 507 U. S. 99 (1993)
Opinion of the Court
I
Petitioner, Emery L. Negonsott, is a member of the Kickapoo Tribe and a resident of the Kickapoo Reservation in Brown County, Kansas. In March 1985, he was arrested by the county sheriff in connection with the shooting of another Indian on the Kickapoo Reservation. After a jury trial in the Brown County District Court, petitioner was found guilty of aggravated battery. Kan. Stat. Ann. § 21-3414 (1988). The District Court set the conviction aside, however, on the ground that the Federal Government had exclusive jurisdiction to prosecute petitioner for the shooting under the Indian Major Crimes Act, 18 U. S. C. § 1153. The Kansas Supreme Court reinstated petitioner's conviction, holding that the Kansas Act conferred jurisdiction on Kansas to prosecute "all crimes committed by or against Indians on Indian reservations located in Kansas." State v. Nioce, 239 Kan. 127, 131, 716 P. 2d 585, 588 (1986). On remand, the Brown County District Court sentenced petitioner to imprisonment for a term of 3 to 10 years.
Petitioner then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U. S. C. § 2254, reasserting his claim that Kansas lacked jurisdiction to prosecute him for aggravated battery. The District Court dismissed his petition, 696 F. Supp. 561 (Kan. 1988), and the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed, 933 F. 2d 818 (1991). The Court of Appeals found the language of the Kansas Act ambiguous as to "whether Congress intended to grant Kansas courts concurrent jurisdiction with federal courts over the crimes enumerated in the [Indian] Major Crimes Act, or whether by the second sentence of the Kansas Act Congress intended to retain exclusive jurisdiction in the federal courts over those specific crimes." Id., at 820-821. After examining the Act's legislative history, however, the Court of Appeals resolved this ambiguity in favor of the first construction, and held that Kansas had jurisdiction to prosecute petitioner for aggra-
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