If you even half-paid attention in high school history class, you might be forgiven for thinking that federal courts are the most powerful courts in the land. After all, they’ve been responsible for landmark rulings about everything from abortion rights to school desegregation — disputes so well-known, the cases are household names: Roe v. Wade. Brown v. Board of Education. Despite those high-profile decisions, when it comes to protecting prisoners’ rights and avoiding executions of innocent people, the top courts in the land are oddly impotent.

Continue reading “The 1990s Law That Keeps People in Prison on Technicalities” →

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in South Dakota has ruled a sex crime conviction doesn’t require that there’s an actual victim.

The court last week upheld the conviction of a man stemming from a sting operation during the 2017 Sturgis motorcycle rally.

Continue reading “Sex crime conviction doesn’t require a victim, court rules in case stemming from sting operation during 2017 Sturgis motorcycle rally” →

San Francisco and Sioux Falls might seem to share little beyond an abbreviation, but the cities wrestle with a common problem: homelessness. In the Bay Area, a persistently high unhoused population has long been a municipal crisis. But shelters are near capacity in South Dakota’s largest city, too, and the growing number of unhoused people on the streets has emerged as an issue in the current mayoral race.

Continue reading “Counties Pledge to Break the Cycle Between Jail and Homelessness” →

When the Justice Department announced in February that it had seized bitcoin worth $3.6 billion, it was more than just the largest recovery of alleged crime proceeds in U.S. history. It was the biggest signal yet that cryptocurrency, once seen as attractive to criminals for its supposed shield of anonymity, may not be so crime-friendly after all.

Just a few years ago, the federal government barely knew what to do with cryptocurrency. Now, most federal law enforcement agencies employ experts adept at tracing it. Investigators are using a new generation of sophisticated software that harnesses big data to link transactions to people, taking advantage of the fact that most cryptocurrency transactions are recorded in public ledgers that can never be erased.

Continue reading “Cryptocurrency is not actually perfectly designed for crime.” →

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that became law in November 2021 not only lays out a spending plan for the repair of roads and bridges but also requires vehicle safety standard revisions and research as well as safety component additions over the next one to three years.

As attorney Michael R. Lemov points out in an opinion piece published by The Hill, the law within its 1,039 pages contains “little-noticed sections designed to implement a reduction in the rising toll of automobile crashes, deaths and injuries.”

Continue reading “Vehicle Safety Standards, Crash Prevention & Increased Fatalities Addressed in Federal Law” →

The stunning leak of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion has caused speculation that the person behind the leak could be held criminally liable, but one expert is skeptical the leak itself violates any laws.

“First, without more, I don’t think there is such a crime,” Orin Kerr, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said on Twitter Monday. “There are criminal laws against leaking classified information, of course. But draft opinions are not classified.”

Continue reading “Leaking SCOTUS draft opinion overturning Roe is not a crime, expert says” →

As the Supreme Court deliberates Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, states across the country are preparing for the possible overturn of the Roe v. Wade abortion ruling.

Over the past few months, state legislatures have passed a variety of restrictions in anticipation of the Dobbs decision. On Thursday, a federal judge blocked a 15-week abortion ban that included reporting requirements from clinics in the state. Kentucky’s two providers said they would not be able to comply with the new reporting guidelines and the ban would have effectively eliminated access to abortion in the state.

Continue reading “Abortion: What the potential overturn of Roe v. Wade means for SD” →

South Dakota has pages of statutes when it comes to crimes that will land someone on the sex offender registry.

But exactly how those intersect with daily life isn’t black and white.

Continue reading “Sex Crimes Defined in South Dakota” →

Continue reading “Immigration: Lesterville Case Decision Touches On Issues” →

It was a blood-soaked night that rocked South Dakota and reverberated around the nation: A mother and two of her children shot dead in their beds on a farmstead near Mount Vernon, South Dakota, in the early morning hours of Sept. 8, 1981.

Her husband, shot through the arm but alive, called law enforcement to the scene. He reported that a masked intruder, who must have killed his wife and boys, had also surprised and shot him, then left, leaving him unconscious.

“Someone has shot my family,” Mathis told law enforcement.

Continue reading “Mathis killings examined in new book” →