If a noise wakes him up at night, he checks the locks on all the doors.
If a car slows down in front of the house, he watches until it drives away.
"I'm keeping a pretty close eye on things," said Tommy Brown, the paternal grandfather who gave Baby Veronica her Cherokee heritage.
"I'm always wondering, 'Is this it? Are they coming for her?' "
With a South Carolina court demanding this week that Veronica be taken back to her adoptive parents immediately, her biological family was bracing itself Tuesday for somebody to enforce that order.
Law enforcement officials could do it eventually. But first, a federal judge or Oklahoma court would have to confirm South Carolina's order, officials said Tuesday.
The family doesn't expect that to happen for up to 20 days, the time Oklahoma law gives them to contest the order.
For now, they're more worried about vigilantes.
"We've had threats," said Robin Brown, Veronica's 23-year-old stepmother. "We're afraid somebody's going to try something."
Hoping to end a custody battle that started when Veronica was 4 months old, a South Carolina judge ordered her father to bring her to Charleston for an official visit with the adoptive parents last Sunday.
When that didn't happen, the judge ordered an "immediate" transfer of custody and asked federal authorities to help enforce it.
The Brown family is hoping, instead, that tribal and Oklahoma courts will declare South Carolina's order invalid here.
"The battle in South Carolina is over," Robin Brown said. "But the battle has just begun here in Oklahoma."
With Veronica's father, Dusten Brown, in Iowa for National Guard training, the South Carolina judge asked military commanders to help enforce the court order.
But the Oklahoma National Guard will not get involved, officials said Tuesday
"There are other legal mechanisms immediately available to the state of South Carolina that have nothing to do with the National Guard or Spc. Brown's military service," Col. Max Moss said.
Last month, knowing that the biological father would be out of state until Aug. 21, a Cherokee court granted temporary guardianship to his wife and parents.
The guardianship order came just five hours before the state Supreme Court of South Carolina decided to give custody to the adoptive parents and terminate the biological father's rights.
The timing of the tribal court's action was a coincidence and not part of a larger legal strategy, said Chrissi Nimmo, an assistant attorney general for the Cherokee Nation.
Nonetheless, the guardianship could turn out to be the tribe's last, best hope to keep Veronica in Oklahoma.
In granting guardianship, Nimmo argues, the tribal court staked a claim to jurisdiction over the case, trumping what South Carolina decided later that day.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that the biological father didn't have special rights under the Indian Child Welfare Act.
But the ruling didn't affect the tribe's right to claim jurisdiction under that federal law and other statutes, Nimmo said.
"A Cherokee court was protecting the interests of a Cherokee child," she said. "That's the way it should be."
The Cherokee court set a hearing for Sept. 4 to reconsider the temporary guardianships. And that hearing will be "very important" in shaping the future of the case, Nimmo said.
Ultimately, however, it could be up to the federal courts to decide who has final jurisdiction.
And the highest federal court, the U.S. Supreme Court, has already ruled against the biological father twice.
First, the court decided in June that the Indian Child Welfare Act didn't give him custody.
Then, in July, the court refused to stop South Carolina from finalizing the adoption.
But a new challenge in federal court would focus more on tribal sovereignty than on paternal rights, Nimmo said.
"It would be an entirely different case," she said, "with different arguments."
But the tribe doesn't seem likely to win that case, either, said Paige Lee, a Ponca City attorney who's not involved with Baby Veronica but who deals with tribal family law.
"They are just grasping at straws to try to prolong the return of the child," Lee said.
The biological father acknowledged South Carolina's jurisdiction when he appeared in court there and sued for custody, Lee said. He was granted custody 19 months ago based on the Indian Child Welfare Act.
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned that decision, sending the case back to South Carolina.
He can't challenge that state's jurisdiction just because he's on the losing side now, Lee said.
"I can't imagine that another court is going to intervene," she said. "If the biological father wants to continue to fight that in Oklahoma, I think he can do that, but it won't be with the child in his home."
If a handover becomes unavoidable, Cherokee Nation officials promise that it will be "orderly and peaceful."
But don't expect Veronica herself to cooperate, her stepmother said.
"They're going to have to pry her away from us," Robin Brown said. "She's going to go kicking and screaming."
Matt and Melanie Capobianco arranged a private adoption with Veronica's birth mother, who had broken off an engagement with Dusten Brown before he deployed to Iraq.
After a two-year court battle, he won custody in December 2011.
"I can only imagine how horrifically painful it was for Matt and Melanie when they were ordered to turn Veronica over 19 months ago," said Lori Alvino McGill, a Washington, D.C., attorney who represents the birth mother.
"But they did it. They followed the law in circumstances where they were handing over their daughter to a man she had never met.
"It is just not acceptable in a society governed by the rule of law for someone to take the law into his own hands because he disagrees with the result."
Action since Supreme Court ruling
Since June 25, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the adoptive parents in the Baby Veronica case, the following court actions have been filed.
July 9: Cherokee Nation District Court officials confirm that Dusten Brown's mother and father, Tommy and Alice Brown, have filed for adoption of Veronica - in line with Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissenting opinion.
July 17: Cherokee Nation courts name three of Dusten Brown's family members as joint guardians, giving them the power to make legal and medical decisions for Veronica and complicating the issue for South Carolina courts.
July 24: Christy Maldonado, Veronica's birth mother, files a lawsuit with several other women who have placed children for adoption, seeking to have part of the Indian Child Welfare Act declared unconstitutional.
July 26: Dusten Brown files a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case and require South Carolina courts to hold a best-interest hearing for Veronica.
July 31: Prior to a hearing on transition details for Veronica, a Cherokee Nation attorney appointed for Veronica files a federal lawsuit in South Carolina seeking to temporarily stop the hearing and hold a best-interest hearing. It is denied.
Friday: The U.S. Supreme Court denies Brown's July 26 petition. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor were the only dissenters.
Monday: A South Carolina judge orders Brown to surrender custody "immediately" after he didn't bring Veronica to a court-ordered visitation with the adoptive parents in South Carolina.
Michael Overall 918-581-8383
michael.overall@tulsaworld.com
Original Print Headline: Oklahoma fight has just begun
Baby Veronica
Baby Veronica's two sets of parents returned at 9 a.m. Wednesday and left at 11:30. It's not clear whether the proceedings were over.
Matt and Melanie Capobianco raised Veronica for the first two years of her life, but she has lived with her Cherokee family in Oklahoma since late 2011.
Continuing coverage: Read more on the Baby Veronica custody battle here.
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