South Dakota’s top law enforcement official wants lawmakers to stiffen penalties for selling drugs in prison and making deepfake pornography, to create consumer protections for DNA data, and to give internet crime investigators swifter access to suspects’ user data.
Those bills are among the 10 proposed by Attorney General Marty Jackley for the 2026 legislative session that begins Tuesday at the Capitol in Pierre.
In a news release Wednesday, Jackley said the package “focuses on many issues this office has dealt with in the past year” and that he looks forward to “working with the governor and legislators during the session on these important opportunities to protect South Dakota.”
Lawmakers have endorsed most of Jackley’s proposals during each legislative session since his ascent to a second stint as attorney general in the 2022 general election.
Some proposals have seen tweaks, however, including one in 2025 that attempted to affix felony penalties for the failure of state employee supervisors to report employee misconduct. Lawmakers passed that bill, but ultimately opted for misdemeanor penalties.
Here are summaries of this year’s proposals.
Senate Bill 17: Foreign political donations
This bill would bar political candidates in South Dakota from accepting donations from foreign nationals. It aims to amend an existing law that prohibits campaign contributions from states, state agencies, foreign governments, federal agencies or the federal government. One violation could net a year in jail and a $2,000 fine. Two or more violations in a single year could draw up to two years in prison.
Senate Bill 41: Deepfakes
This bill targets “deepfake” pornography, created with digital technology to resemble a real person without that person’s consent. The bill would amend an existing law, adding a definition of “digitally fabricated material” and making it a crime to “create, disclose, disseminate, distribute, or sell” such material when it depicts a nonconsenting person in a “state of nudity,” or engaged in any manner of sexual act.
Senate Bill 42: Prison drugs
Currently, possession of controlled substances in prison — by inmates or staff members — is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. This bill would up the penalty to a maximum of 15 years. The bill would also update the state’s drug ingestion statutes to make it a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, for an inmate or parolee to fail a drug test for controlled substances. Ingestion of a controlled substance was a felony for everyone until last year, when lawmakers voted to make first- and second-offense ingestion a misdemeanor. Jackley opposed that move.
You can read the full article at South Dakota Searchlight.