South Dakota

A South Dakota state sen­a­tor who pre­vi­ous­ly served as a pros­e­cu­tor and a state court judge has intro­duced a bill to lim­it the breadth of the state’s death penal­ty statute. Senate Bill 98, intro­duced by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arthur Rusch (R – Clay, pic­tured) on January 25, 2021, would restrict cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to a sin­gle aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stance, pre­med­i­tat­ed mur­ders in which a defen­dant killed a police offi­cer, cor­rec­tions offi­cer, or fire­fight­er dur­ing the per­for­mance of their offi­cial duties.

Whether South Dakota death-row pris­on­er Charles Rhines (pic­tured) lives or dies may depend less on whether he was con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death and more on whether the courts val­ue final­i­ty more than they val­ue fair­ness. As Rhines filed two sep­a­rate peti­tions in the U.S. Supreme Court and an appeal in the South Dakota Supreme Court on November 1, the South Dakota Department of Corrections announced that his exe­cu­tion, sched­uled for the week of November 3, 2019, would be car­ried out short­ly after noon on Monday, November 4. [UPDATE:…

In the midst of National Pride Month com­mem­o­rat­ing the 50^th anniver­sary of the Stonewall Riots and the birth of the mod­ern LGBTQ rights move­ment, South Dakota has issued a death war­rant seek­ing to exe­cute a gay man whose death sen­tence was taint­ed by anti-gay bias. Charles Rhines (pic­tured) was sen­tenced to death by a jury that, accord­ing to juror affi­davits, was influ­enced by big­ot­ed stereo­types in reach­ing its deci­sion. On June 25, 2019, in response to a motion filed by state pros­e­cu­tors, Pennington County cir­cuit court Judge Robert A. Mandel…

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the case of a South Dakota death-row pris­on­er whose jurors made anti-gay state­ments and relied on homo­pho­bic beliefs in decid­ing to sen­tence him to death. On April 15, 2019, the Court with­out com­ment denied a peti­tion filed by Charles Rhines (pic­tured) ask­ing the Court to declare that the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to an impar­tial jury applies equal­ly to bias against a defendant’s sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. In a state­ment respond­ing to the Court’s deci­sion, Shawn Nolan, one of Rhines’ fed­er­al appeals lawyers, said: ​“As Chief…

As human rights activists raise alarms about a new law in Brunei that would pun­ish homo­sex­u­al­i­ty by death by ston­ing, the U.S. Supreme Court con­sid­ers whether to hear a case in which jurors who exhib­it­ed anti-gay big­otry sen­tenced a gay defen­dant to death. Charles Rhines (pic­tured), a South Dakota death-row pris­on­er, is ask­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case, after a low­er fed­er­al court denied him the oppor­tu­ni­ty to present juror state­ments show­ing that homo­pho­bic prej­u­dice played a role in his death sen­tence. Leading civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions, including…

The South Dakota Supreme Court has denied motions that sought to delay the October 29, 2018 exe­cu­tion of Rodney Berget (pic­tured). As the state pre­pared to exe­cute Berget, the for­mer pub­lic defend­er who rep­re­sent­ed him at tri­al took action to fight a prospec­tive legal guardian’s efforts to keep the for­mer Special Olympics par­tic­i­pant from being put to death. On Friday, October 26, Juliet Yackel, a Chicago-based lawyer who had been retained in Berget’s state post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings as a mit­i­ga­tion inves­ti­ga­tor, filed a plead­ing called a peti­tion for writ of prohibition…

A gay man on death row in South Dakota has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case and to rule that it is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al for jurors to impose the death penal­ty based upon anti-gay ani­mus and stereo­types. Charles Rhines (pic­tured) argues that South Dakota’s courts improp­er­ly refused to con­sid­er evi­dence — includ­ing an affi­davit from one of his jurors that the jury ​“knew that he was a homo­sex­u­al and thought that he shouldn’t be able to spend his life with men in prison” — show­ing that jurors in his case improp­er­ly based…

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…