At the urg­ing of the victim’s fam­i­ly, Rapid City, South Dakota pros­e­cu­tors have with­drawn their request for the death penal­ty against two mur­der defen­dants in the only cap­i­tal tri­als pend­ing in the state. On April 16, Pennington County State’s Attorney Mark Vargo with­drew the state’s notice of intent to seek the death penal­ty against Jonathon Klinetobein—charged with arrang­ing the May 2015 mur­der-for-hire of his ex-girl­friend, Jessica Rehfeld—after her father, Michael Rehfeld told the court the fam­i­ly no longer want­ed the death penal­ty to be imposed. On April 19, pros­e­cu­tors also with­drew their notice of intent against a sec­ond defen­dant, Richard Hirth, the accused killer. A third defen­dant plead­ed guilty to the mur­der in January in exchange for receiv­ing a life sen­tence. Mr. Rehfeld said that he had been ​“con­sumed with anger” at the time the cap­i­tal charges were ini­tial­ly sought and that he had ​“ful­ly sup­port­ed” that deci­sion. However, he said, with time, he had recon­sid­ered his posi­tion. Mr. Rehfeld said the lengthy appeal process fol­low­ing the impo­si­tion of a death sen­tence in the case would keep his daughter’s killers in the news, per­mit­ting ​“the guilty to become famous,” as a pro­longed trau­mat­ic court­room saga that rel­e­gat­ed his daugh­ter to a side­light pre­vent­ed the fam­i­ly from heal­ing. He also said that the fam­i­ly would be unable to recov­er his daughter’s per­son­al belong­ings — includ­ing a cell­phone with the last pic­tures tak­en of her — as long as the case remained on appeal. Klinetobein and Hirth now face life with­out parole if con­vict­ed. Victims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers, con­cerned that the cap­i­tal tri­al and appeals process inter­feres with or delays heal­ing, are increas­ing­ly request­ing that pros­e­cu­tors not pur­sue the death penal­ty. A University of Minnesota study found that just 2.5% of vic­tims’ fam­i­ly mem­bers report­ed achiev­ing clo­sure as a result of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, while 20.1% said the exe­cu­tion did not help them heal. Another study, pub­lished in the Marquette Law Review, found that fam­i­ly mem­bers in homi­cide pro­ceed­ings in which the death penal­ty was unavail­able or had not been imposed were phys­i­cal­ly, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, and emo­tion­al­ly more healthy and expressed greater sat­is­fac­tion with the legal sys­tem than fam­i­ly mem­bers in death-penal­ty cas­es. Pennington County Commission Chairman Lloyd LaCroix said the deci­sion to with­draw the death penal­ty would save the coun­ty mon­ey, although he was uncer­tain how much. In September 2017, the com­mis­sion­ers grant­ed requests by the coun­ty courts and the pub­lic defender’s office for half-mil­lion-dol­lar increas­es to their 2018 bud­gets. The direc­tor of the pub­lic defender’s office had pre­vi­ous­ly esti­mat­ed that tax­pay­ers could ​“rea­son­ably expect” to pay between $500,000 and $1 mil­lion in pros­e­cu­tion and defense costs for the cas­es. Rapid City last imposed a death sen­tence in 1993. Charles Rhines’ appeals in that case reached the U.S. Supreme Court before being sent back for addi­tion­al appeals that are still in progress.

(Tiffany Tan, State with­draws death penal­ty request for sec­ond mur­der defen­dant, Rapid City Journal, April 19, 2018; Tiffany Tan, State with­draws death penal­ty in Rehfeld mur­der case, Rapid City Journal, April 16, 2018; Tiffany Tan, Big boost in fund­ing for death penal­ty cas­es, Rapid City Journal, October 15, 2017.) See Victims and Costs.

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