The only man on death row in South Dakota wants a federal judge to give him another set of appeals because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upended its prior guidance on the authority of federal bureaucrats.
In 2000, Briley Piper, Elijah Page and Darrell Hoadley tortured and killed Chester Allan Poage near Spearfish.
Piper and Page received death sentences; Hoadley was sentenced to life in prison.
Page was put to death by lethal injection on July 11, 2007. His was the first death sentence carried out in South Dakota in 60 years. The state has since executed four other convicted murderers.
Piper, who was not in the courtroom on Friday, has exhausted his appeals in state court, including with the state Supreme Court.
On Friday at the federal courthouse in Sioux Falls, Piper’s public defender team told U.S. District Judge Roberto Lange he ought to review some of the state Supreme Court’s conclusions and overturn them.
They took two tacks: one aimed to show that judges, prior legal teams and prosecutors made mistakes in areas like jury selection or the presentation of certain witnesses in ways that made a death sentence more likely. Claims of that nature are quite common in death penalty appeals.
The other argument came from a more novel angle, based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision last summer in Loper Bright v. Raimondo that had nothing whatsoever to do with anyone on death row — or even with criminal law.
Ruling opens new avenue for Piper
The Loper Bright decision overturned a four-decade precedent under which judges were generally expected to defer to the expertise of administrative rulemakers when the rules they’ve written are challenged in court.
Critics of that “Chevron doctrine” precedent, including Republican U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, had long argued that agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency hyperextend their authority under the color of laws like the Clean Air or Clean Water acts to make life difficult for citizens and businesses.
The Loper Bright ruling says judges have supremacy to interpret laws under the Constitution, including rules written in service of those laws. If Congress wants the EPA to enforce rules on wetlands or allowable levels of lead in old pipes, the justices reasoned, Congress should write those rules into law.
South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley was among the state attorneys general to sign on to briefs supporting the prevailing arguments in Loper Bright.
You can read the full article at South Dakota Searchlight.