Death Penalty News

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit has rejected the latest appeal from Briley Piper, the only person on death row in South Dakota. In March 2000, Briley Piper, along with co-defendants Elijah Page and Darrell Hoadley, conspired to burglarize the Lawrence County home of 19-year-old Chester Poage before abducting and murdering him by beating, stabbing, and stoning in a remote area.  Piper was subsequently arrested, convicted of murder, and sentenced to death, while his accomplices received either a death sentence—carried out against Page in 2007—or a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. 

The state of Indiana is sched­uled to car­ry out its first exe­cu­tion in 15 years on December 18, 2024, with the sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Joseph Corcoran. Sentenced to death for the 1997 mur­ders of four peo­ple, includ­ing his broth­er, Mr. Corcoran has a long his­to­ry of seri­ous men­tal ill­ness. He has been diag­nosed with schiz­o­phre­nia, which includes symp­toms of hal­lu­ci­na­tions and delu­sions, and mul­ti­ple experts have tes­ti­fied that he is incom­pe­tent to face exe­cu­tion. Mr. Corcoran holds the con­sis­tent belief that prison guards are tor­tur­ing him with an ultra­sound machine. 

PIERRE — A bill that would have removed the death penalty as the state’s ultimate punishment failed to get out of a Senate committee Thursday morning by one vote. SB 109, sponsored by Sen. Reynold Nesiba, D-Sioux Falls, had a litany of supporters who spoke about the morality of the death penalty and how many countries have removed capital punishment. But, testimony by the widow of a correctional officer who was murdered on the job had audience members in the Senate Judiciary room reaching for tissues and wiping eyes. 

After Charles Rhines, a gay man, was convicted of murder, jurors weighing a death sentence argued that sending him to prison for life would have been “sending him where he wants to go” because of all the men there. Advocates around the country are fighting jury discrimination after one man’s sexuality was a contributing factor in his 2019 execution. Charles Rhines confessed to murdering 22-year-old Donnivan Schaefer during a 1992 burglary in South Dakota. The defendant went to a Rapid City doughnut shop — from which he’d been fired weeks earlier — forced Schaefer into a storeroom, tied him up and stabbed him repeatedly in the stomach, according to CBS News. RELATED |  South Dakota executes Charles Rhines The controversy in Rhines’ case came during the sentencing phase of his 1993 murder trial, when jurors were left to decide between a sentence of life in prison or death by execution.  He received the death penalty — in part because the men and women tasked with deciding his fa...

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — A Sioux Falls man who could face the death penalty if convicted of killing his infant son pleaded not guilty Monday. A grand jury last week determined that Dylan Castimore can be charged with first-degree murder in the death of 8-week-old Daxton Castimore.  The defendant was originally charged with second-degree murder and manslaughter. Minnehaha County State’s Attorney Daniel Haggar has not decided whether to pursue the death penalty, which became a possibility with the new charge.  Should Haggar decline the capital punishment option, Castimore would face a mandatory life sentence, KELO-TV reported. Castimore looked down as the new charges were read on Monday.  When asked if he understood the charges, Castimore said, “Yes, your honor,” and the judge entered a not guilty plea on his behalf. An autopsy determined the baby’s death was caused by a skull fracture.  A contributing factor in the child’s death was a lacerated liver.  Court docu...

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,) 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. Sen. Rusch said his experience of adjudicating capital cases influenced his decision to introduce the bill. “I am the first legislator in the history of the state of South Dakota who has personally sentenced a man to death,” he said. Rusch served as a judge in South Dakota’s first judicial district for 18 years and imposed a death sentence on Donald Moeller, who was executed in 2012. Rusch said, “During all those years as a prosecutor I would have said the death penalty doesn’t bother me...

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court refused on Monday to take up an appeal from South Dakota’s only death row inmate, who pleaded guilty to taking part in a torture killing 20 years ago. The court did not comment in leaving in place the death sentence for Briley Piper, 39, of Anchorage, Alaska, who was one of three people convicted in the killing of Chester Allen Poage of Spearfish, South Dakota.  One has been executed and the other is serving a life sentence in prison. Prosecutors said the three men were high on methamphetamine and LSD when they decided to burglarize Poage’s home.  The episode ended with the men stoning Poage to death.  One of the defendants, Elijah Page, was executed in 2007.  A third man, Darrell Hoadley, was convicted at trial and sentenced to life in prison. The South Dakota Supreme Court upheld Poage's sentence in 2019. Justices said the arguments from Piper were “untimely” and didn’t contest his guilt, Piper had argued in his appeal that his guilt...

Lincoln County prosecutors say they intend to seek the death penalty of a Sioux Falls man accused of killing a woman after she was leaving work in January.  Lincoln County State's Attorney Tom Wollman said Thursday that his office intends to seek the death penalty against Amir Hasan Beaudion Jr., 20, should he be found guilty by a jury of murder charges in connection to the death of Pasqalina Esen Badi. The case meets multiple aggravating circumstances needed to be a capital case, Wollman said. The aggravating circumstances here, Wollman said, include: that the crime was committed for the purpose of receiving money or any other thing of monetary value; the offense was outrageously or wantonly vile; and that the offense was committed for the purpose of avoiding, interfering with, or preventing arrest.  Only a Class A felony – like premeditated first-degree murder – is eligible for the death penalty in South Dakota. Should a defendant be found guilty, a jury w...

Executions, new death sentences and public support for the death penalty remain low, the Death Penalty Information Center said. Executions, new death sentences and public support for the death penalty in the United States remained at their lowest levels in decades this year as half of the country has abolished the death penalty or imposed a moratorium on executions, according to the annual report of a death penalty research group released on Tuesday. The group, the Death Penalty Information Center , a nonprofit that opposes capital punishment, found that states carried out fewer than 30 executions and imposed fewer than 50 new death sentences for the fifth year in a row, continuing sharp declines since 1999, when there were nearly 100 executions. California instituted a moratorium on executions, New Hampshire became the 21st state to abolish the death penalty entirely and Indiana has gone a decade with no executions, the report said. On death row: 2,656 While ex...

South Dakota has used capital punishment since 1877; state showing no signs of stopping now. Wild Bill Hickok died holding a pair of black aces and a pair of black eights — the dead man's hand. He was shot by Jack McCall, whose death later marked South Dakota's 1st recorded execution. McCall was hanged for the killing in Yankton on March 1, 1877. The ultimate punishment has been used sparingly since then, with a total of 20 men being put to death for "wantonly vile or heinous" crimes. After a string of 9 in the late 1800s, decades would pass between executions, the Argus Leader reported. Across the United States, the use of the death penalty has declined sharply over the last 25 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), a national nonprofit that doesn't take a stance on the death penalty but often criticizes the way the sentence is administered. New death sentences have decreased by more than 85% since the mid-1990...

Since the beginning of the year, seven states have executed 19 men convicted of murder. That ranks among the lowest annual execution totals since the practice resumed in 1976 after a U.S. Supreme Court decision, according to statistics maintained by the Death Penalty Information Center . But it’s only November, so there’s still time for more. In fact, Georgia has scheduled an execution for Wednesday, and Texas has one set for a week later. And after a 16-year hiatus, the federal government plans to resume executions next month by killing Daniel Lewis Lee, one of two white supremacists convicted of the 1996 murders of a married Arkansas couple and their 8-year-old daughter. The other person convicted in that case , Chevie Kehoe, who by most accounts was the instigator of the violence, received a life sentence. That disparity is a microcosm of one of the key flaws of capital punishment: It is fundamentally arbitrary in its application. Two men were convicted of the same murder...

South Dakota man executed for 1992 stabbing death of doughnut shop co-worker (Reuters) - A South Dakota man convicted of fatally stabbing a former doughnut shop co-worker during a 1992 burglary was put to death by lethal injection on Monday night, after the U.S. Supreme Court denied three 11th-hour petitions to stay his execution. Charles Rhines, 63, whose lawyers argued that his death sentence was tainted by anti-gay bias toward him on the part of jurors, was pronounced dead at 7:39 p.m. CST at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls, prison spokesman Michael Winder said. Rhines’ execution had been scheduled for early in the afternoon but was delayed for several hours while state corrections officials awaited word from the U.S. Supreme Court on his final appeals. All three applications for a stay were rejected by the high court on Monday evening. Rhines, a high school dropout, was found guilty of murdering Donnivan Schaeffer, 22, an employee at Dig ‘E...