A new South Dakota law makes it harder to file a nuisance complaint or lawsuit against an agricultural operation and limits the amount of money that can be awarded.

Gov. Kristi Noem signed the bill Wednesday at a farm implement dealership in Mitchell, after legislators approved it earlier this winter. The law will go into effect July 1.

Noem said it’s about protecting farmers from frivolous lawsuits.

Continue reading “New SD law makes it harder to file a complaint or lawsuit against ag operations” →

St. Patrick’s Day brings people out to party, but when out celebrating law enforcement wants you to be safe.

Overall, in the U.S. every 45 minutes someone loses their life to a drunk driving crash which is about 32 people per day, according to the CDC. According to AWJ law, there are on average 300 car crashes on St. Patrick’s Day alone.

If you do decide to go out, there should be a game plan on who stays sober.

Continue reading “Forbes ranks South Dakota fifth with the drunkest drivers” →

It’s well-known that federal mandatory minimums result in disproportionate and inflexible prison sentences. These penalties are especially notorious in drug cases, where they’ve contributed significantly to racial disparities in prison. What may be surprising, though, is that many of these sentences continue even after the underlying laws are repealed.

When Congress changes the penalty for a given crime, it doesn’t automatically benefit people already serving time in prison for that offense. Congress must specifically make the change retroactive — which some lawmakers hesitate to do. The result is that hundreds, maybe even thousands of people are in federal prison today serving severe sentences that Congress no longer believes are fair or effective.

A 2022 Supreme Court decision — Concepcion v. United States — raised hope for expanded relief for those still in prison under now-repudiated federal penalties. Instead, there remains a deep disagreement among federal courts over how, if at all, to weigh nonretroactive changes to federal penalties when revisiting a prison sentence. The full contours of the decision’s impact will become clearer with time, but ultimately, correcting unjust and now disavowed sentencing laws will likely require a more comprehensive approach.

In 2009, Carlos Concepcion was sentenced to 19 years in federal prison under a harsh law, no longer in effect, for people convicted of crack cocaine distribution. That law — the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 — required that such offenses would be punished as severely as those involving 100 times as much powder cocaine. This penalty structure ultimately drove deep racial disparities in prison and catalyzed a campaign for reform. Then, in 2010, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced this controversial and unjustified weight ratio to 18-to-1 on a forward-looking basis. Eight years later, Congress passed the First Step Act, which (among other things) finally allowed people sentenced for crack cocaine distribution before the Fair Sentencing Act to apply for a shorter prison term under the 18-to-1 rubric.

In 2019, Concepcion petitioned for a sentence reduction under the relevant part of the First Step Act, Section 404. In opposing his request, the government argued to the federal district court that the original sentence still fell within the upper limits of the new allowable sentencing range. But Concepcion also argued that he no longer qualified as a “career offender,” a status that had greatly increased his initial sentence. One of his prior state-level convictions had been vacated, and subsequent nonretroactive changes in federal sentencing law meant his other convictions would no longer trigger the career offender “enhancement.” Without this designation, Concepcion argued to the district judge, his sentence should be significantly lower: somewhere around five to six years.

You can read the full article at The Atlantic.

Continue reading “Federal Judge Strikes Down Missouri’s “Second Amendment Preservation Act” as Unconstitutional” →

There’s a new book out about South Dakota’s most infamous cold case investigation.

“Vanished in Vermillion” was written by former KELO TV reporter Lou Raguse, who spent years researching files and conducting interviews to find the truth about what really happened to two teenage girls who mysteriously disappeared.

In 1971, Pam Jackson and Sherri Miller were on their way to an end-of-the-school-year party.

Continue reading “New book about a decades-old South Dakota cold case” →

The United States has had its fair share of strange legislation in its existence thus far.

This includes an age limit on those who use playgrounds in Kansas, a prohibition on masked groups in New York (until the COVID-19 pandemic changed life as we know it) and a ban on using ferrets as hunting animals in West Virginia.

Here’s part three of Fox News Digital’s list of the most bizarre and interesting laws in America — from Alabama to Wyoming.

Continue reading “50 bizarre laws that have existed or still exist in America” →

Republican state lawmakers want to shield children by closing the curtains on drag performances.

Legislation moving through several GOP-controlled capitols would ban the gender-diverse shows in front of young people — including at schools, colleges, or on public property — sparking a furious response from the LGBTQ community and civil liberties groups.

“We’re just trying to keep minors away from sexually explicit material,” Arkansas Republican state Rep. Mary Bentley told her fellow lawmakers at a hearing Wednesday about a bill she’s co-sponsoring to prohibit children from watching drag shows that might affect student performances. Many drag shows do not contain sexually explicit content, especially when performers — who often wear more clothing — are entertaining in spaces where children may be present.

Continue reading “Republican states are fuming — and legislating — over drag performances” →

The state House of Representatives passed a bill to impose mandatory minimum sentences on anyone who gets four or more driving under the influence convictions.

The passage of House Bill 1170 comes shortly after Senate passage of a proposal to limit parole for the most violent offenders.

HB 1170 comes from Rep. Chris Karr, R-Sioux Falls, who lost his grandmother to a drunken driver who had nine DUI convictions.

Continue reading “House advances mandatory minimums for multiple DUIs” →

South Dakota and Utah are the latest states to pass laws banning transgender surgeries on children under 18, moving against court challenges to such limitations in other states.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem signed the Help Not Harm Act on Feb. 3, preventing gender reassignment surgery and drug treatment on children suffering from gender dysphoria, following Utah Gov. Spender Cox’s signature on a similar bill there. Court challenges are promised against the Utah measure already in effect, NBC News reported, and challenges are anticipated against the South Dakota law set to take effect in July.

Continue reading “States move to block childhood transgender surgery” →

Kentucky resident Deric Lostutter is fighting to regain the right to vote.

Lostutter is now a paralegal but previously was a member of hacktivist group Anonymous and served out a prison sentence after violating a federal anti-hacking law.

His particular state and the nature of his conviction are proving to be sticking points as he seeks re-enfranchisement: Kentucky indefinitely revokes voting permissions for residents with certain kinds of felonies on their records. That includes offenses that, like Lostutter’s, were tried in federal court; as such, he’d need a governor’s pardon to be re-enfranchised.

Lostutter lost voting rights after being convicted in 2017 of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and lying to the FBI about his actions, and he served two years. He and a co-collaborator had conducted a hack in an effort to put pressure and public attention on two Steubenville, Ohio, high school football players’ rape of an unconscious 16-year-old, as well as on school employees believed to have enabled or hidden the assault.

“I went after a coverup of a rape case,” Lostutter told Government Technology. “Did I commit a crime? Yes: I accessed a website without permission — a football fan website, where I posted allegations and evidence of the coverup to protect the football team. Do I admit that was wrong? Yes. Did I serve my time? Yes. Was it violent? No.”

That lack of permission is where the CFAA comes in. The federal law criminalizes accessing information on an Internet-connected device either without “authorization” or by exceeding the authorization one already has.

The CFAA is a controversial law. While it appears intended to prevent malicious hacking, it’s also come under fire over the years for its vague wording that some say risks scooping up more innocuous individuals alongside genuinely dangerous actors.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) appeared to acknowledge this concern last May when it issued a policy revision clarifying the law’s scope. The DOJ explained that the CFAA should not, for example, be used to charge security researchers or people who exaggerate in their online dating profiles.

Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), told GovTech that the latest DOJ revision is helpful but still fails to clearly pin down the parameters of the law and create bright lines between common online behavior and genuinely dangerous and damaging activity.

You can read the full article at Government Technology.