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Arkansas Supreme Court Decision Allows New DNA Testing in Case of the ​“West Memphis Three,” Convicted of Killing Three Children in 1993

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On April 18, 2024, the Arkansas Supreme Court decided 4-3 to reverse a 2022 lower court decision and allow genetic testing of crime scene evidence from the 1993 killing of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis. The three men convicted in 1994 for the killings were released in 2011 after taking an Alford plea, in which they maintained their innocence but plead guilty to the crime, in exchange for 18 years’ time served and 10 years of a suspended sentence. 

South Dakota Sees Funding Increase Amid Death Penalty Cases

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2 high-profile death penalty cases in western South Dakota have led to large increases in funding for a county courthouse and public defender's office.

Defending 2 men facing the possibility of the death penalty in a murder case will cost a western South Dakota county's budget as much as $1 million more in 2018.

Pennington County commissioners granted the request made by the courthouse and public defenders last month for more than $500,000 increases each to their 2018 budgets. 

A large portion of those will go toward defending two men facing the death penalty on 1st-degree murder charges, the Rapid City Journal reported .

Jonathon Klinetobe, 28, and Richard Hirth, 36, have been charged with murder, kidnapping and conspiracy in the disappearance and death of Jessica Rehfeld, 22, in 2015. 

Klinetobe is represented by 3 appointed lawyers, 2 from the county public defender's office and 1 private attorney. Hirth has 2 court-appointed private lawyers.

The law requires defendants who can't afford to hire a lawyer be appointed one by the court. 

Death penalty cases require at least 2 lawyers, but defendants are responsible for repaying the county the cost of their legal defense.

Death penalty cases are "exceedingly expensive" and taxpayers can reasonably expect to shoulder up to $1 million for the prosecution and defense such a case, said Eric Whitcher, director of the county public defender's office.

"The people who are available to handle those cases are highly specialized, and they cost significant funds," he said, including criminal investigators, lab analysts, psychiatrists, crime scene analysts and pathologists.

Klinetobe and Hirth have been detained at the county jail since May 2016. 

It's unclear when they will go to trial, but their cases will likely again come under the spotlight in budget hearings for 2019 if they aren't tried before then.

Source: Associated Press, October 22, 2017


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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
Location: South Dakota, USA
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