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Dawn Long and Mark Cook’s cases may not have had much else in common, but they did begin and end with the same charges.
Both were at one point charged with attempted murder and, like many across the state who faced similar charges, ultimately accepted plea bargains and are now in prison for aggravated assault. That outcome has been the most common among the state’s attempted murder cases in recent years.
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The members of the Dante Fire Department see themselves as a family.
Earlier this year, that family decided to honor the family of one of their own by dedicating its newly-purchased brush truck to Josie and Mikey Van Duysen, who died in a car crash in October near Leola at the ages of 4 and 2, respectively.
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Mason and Sean Kobold won’t be the first people to graduate at the Corn Palace, but their graduation Saturday will mark a different kind of first.
When the twins walk across the Corn Palace stage with Mitchell High School’s graduating class, they will become the first people enrolled at Mitchell’s Behavior Care Specialists location, which offers behavioral treatment to those on the autism spectrum, to have graduated.
“This is the biggest milestone. They started out in the NICU in Sioux Falls,” said Shanna Kobold, Sean and Mason’s mother. “I didn’t think we were going to get this far.”
Both Mason and Sean Kobold told The Daily Republic on Tuesday that they’re excited for graduation, an experience they’ll share with people they’ve known since they were students at Gertie Belle Rogers Elementary School together.
Demetrius Wells, who has worked closely with the Kobolds at BCS, said the twins’ graduation will be bittersweet.
“It’s an amazing experience watching them grow. It’s phenomenal, from the time I’ve gotten here until now, to see (them) mature. I can’t tell you how many stories I have about them,” Wells said. “It’s like watching your own kid go across the stage, and it’s tough, at the same time, that they have to move on. They’re not little kids anymore. They’re becoming young men. It’s also very beautiful.”
Mitchell’s is one of 17 BCS locations across four states, and the twins were the reason the organization came to town. When the Kobolds were in seventh grade, they became BCS’ first clients in Mitchell.
“Since (BCS has) been here, they’ve been able to expand out and help other kids, so it’s been a blessing,” Shanna Kobold said.
The branch now has 14 students and balances classwork with other activities – for instance, the Kobolds said they’re excited to visit water parks over the summer.
“We try to make things fun for them,” Wells said. “Obviously, we’re going to do what we think is reinforcing for them. There’s also a lot of work involved.”
Currently, Mason starts his weekdays at Mitchell High School before heading to BCS. Sean, who Shanna Kobold said tends to prefer smaller group settings, goes to the high school for a class every other day.
At BCS, Wells said he would describe the two brothers as “legends,” in part because of the attitudes they bring to affect others positively.
“We like to make everybody have fun,” Mason said.
After graduation, Mason and Sean will continue going to BCS through the summer, which Shanna Kobold said is intended to keep things in balance for them. They’re planning to transition to LifeQuest, where Mason is considering joining the workforce program.
“They are capable of phenomenal things if they put their minds to it,” Wells said. “All I can say for these gentlemen is just, job well done. … I’ve learned a lot working with them and working for them. I’ve learned a lot about myself.”
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After being sentenced Tuesday to six years in prison, Dawn Long will be parole-eligible in less time than her ex-husband, Todd Long, has waited to see her sentenced for what began as an attempted murder case.
Two judges and eight cancelled trial dates later, Todd Long said he’s relieved to be able to, for the first time in the three years and seven months since the caffeine poisoning that sent him to the hospital, go out in public without worry of seeing the woman who was at one point accused of trying to murder him.
Dawn Long was given a 15-year sentence with nine years suspended for one count of aggravated assault. The plea agreement she accepted in February allowed for a maximum sentence of 15 years with seven suspended, and Todd Long told The Daily Republic on Thursday that considering the restrictions of the deal, he was relieved by Judge Chris Giles’ decision not to suspend additional time.
“It was a nice surprise,” Todd Long said. “I think, the way it sounds to me from the state’s attorney’s office, the judge knew a lot of the evidence. I think he looked at everything carefully … I don’t want to say I’m happy with him, but with what he had to work with, as far as the plea and this, I’m happy with where it’s at.”
Todd Long told The Daily Republic on Thursday he thought the Davison County case might have moved faster from the beginning if bond had been kept higher when Dawn Long was charged with attempted murder. That was months after she was charged with setting fire to the house she and Todd Long used to live in.
“She wouldn’t have been out of jail, running around, getting pregnant twice,” Todd Long said. “I can see having a smaller bond on the fire, but when you get charged a second time for a felony, I think somebody should be looking at that and going like, ‘No, this person needs to be in jail and off the streets.'”
Instead, Dawn Long paid 10 percent of a $250,000 bond and spent more than two and a half years among the public, serving 21 days in jail prior to sentencing. Earlier this year, she accepted a plea deal that dismissed attempted murder and reckless burning charges in exchange for a no contest plea to one count of aggravated assault.
Ashley Anson, one of Dawn Long’s attorneys, said at the sentencing hearing that her client’s employment status, a presentence evaluation stating she had a low risk of reoffending and the fact that she’s given birth to one child while out on bond and is now expecting another all pointed in her favor.
“The state would ask that she not move on with her life,” Anson said.
Deputy State’s Attorney Bob O’Keefe said Dawn Long’s two pregnancies instead were intended to garner sympathy from the court, in contrast with internet searches on how to kill someone and Todd Long’s statements on the stand that Dawn Long had faked brain cancer when they began discussing divorce.
“When Dawn was asked to describe herself, (she said), ‘I care about others, I put their needs before my own,'” O’Keefe said, referencing the presentence investigation. “This was a planned and calculated attack to cause her husband pain and injury, maybe even death. … A person doesn’t put others’ needs in front of their own by faking cancer.”
In terms of its outcome, Dawn Long’s case was not abnormal among others that started with attempted murder charges.
Of the 34 people in South Dakota who were accused of attempted murder and accepted plea deals between 2014 and 2018, 19 were convicted of aggravated assault and are serving an average of just under eight years in prison. Seven others were convicted of aggravated assault against a law enforcement officer, which, like attempted first-degree murder, is a Class 2 felony.
However, Long’s stands out among that same set of cases when it comes to the time it took to settle. Between when she was indicted for attempted murder – already nine months after Todd Long was hospitalized and the house fire occurred – and Feb. 21, the day she pleaded no contest to aggravated assault, 944 days passed.
“To me, the police and the state’s attorney’s office, they’re doing what they need to do,” Todd Long said. “But they’re corrected by a judge that gives them a bond that they can just walk out.”
From 2014 to 2018, 51 people, including Dawn Long, were charged with attempted first- or second-degree murder, according to a report from the South Dakota Unified Judicial System.
Of those people, 34 pleaded guilty or no contest to one or more charges, while seven cases went to trial, six were dismissed entirely and four are still pending.
The time it took for those 34 people to accept a plea varied widely, with the shortest being Daniel Zundel’s 52-day span between the date his case was filed in Codington County and Jan. 28, 2015, the day he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault. Most accepted pleas within a year of charges being filed.
The time between Dawn Long’s indictment and plea is about six months longer than that of anyone else charged in the past five years, and it’s about three times as long as the average.
The Long case stretched through the transition period in 2017 during which Judge Chris Giles, who sentenced Dawn Long on Tuesday, took over the circuit court position previously held by Judge Timothy Bjorkman.
Todd Long said that while the Davison County State’s Attorney’s Office generally kept him updated on evidence and the general proceedings of the case, he was frustrated to see newer criminal cases regularly brought before the court and settled before Dawn Long’s.
“It just sat there,” he said about the case’s progress during the fall of 2017. “Wouldn’t we be the first one on the docket to go? We need to get this thing done.”
While proceedings in the criminal case have now ended, Todd Long said his days of seeing Dawn Long in a courtroom are not yet over, as she’s now taking him to divorce court to negotiate over property.
He also said he’ll likely never receive money from the insurance company that covered the house where the fire took place and which he said was valued at $232,000.
“She would not meet with (the insurance company). If the insured won’t meet with the insurance company, it’s right in the policy that the claim is automatically denied,” he said.
Todd Long said the past three years and seven months have also been hard on the son he and Dawn Long have in common, but that in the past month or so, he’s seemed relieved.
“When I saw him on Tuesday afternoon, I told him it was done and she was going to prison,” Todd Long said. “The only thing he asked is, ‘how long?'”
During his testimony at the sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Todd Long said that throughout the case, their son has not wanted to see Dawn Long and declined to testify.
While Todd Long said he and his son are both working on moving on, he noted that he’s still been going over the case in his head since sentencing.
“It’s taken three years of my life that I’ll never get back,” he said.
After testimony from 17 prospective witnesses and argument from both sides, decisions on several motions were made Friday morning in preparation for the trial of a Mitchell man accused of killing his wife in 2017.
Judge Chris Giles granted the state’s requests to allow hearsay statements made by the decedent, Marie Brinker, as well as evidence of the domestic relationship she had with 40-year-old James Brinker, the man who will stand trial for her death five weeks from Monday. Giles denied the defense’s motions to suppress statements James Brinker made to law enforcement and to not allow the state to call a witness to speak to domestic abuse in general.
Giles said the decisions he made Friday are preliminary and may be adjusted as he further examines evidence prior to the trial.
The state motioned to allow evidence of the Brinkers’ domestic relationship into the trial on the grounds that doing so would give the jury more context. Deputy Attorney General Robert Mayer said if the jury was not given evidence, such as testimony from three of Marie Brinker’s neighbors who testified that they saw altercations between James and Marie Brinker prior to Marie’s death, James Brinker would be given a “pretense of warmth and affection” to which he doesn’t have a right.
Giles agreed that evidence of abuse and the Brinkers’ domestic relationship is relevant in the case and determined that testimony from the three neighbors and Marie Brinker’s father and brother, Jan and Brody Berkhout, would be allowed during the jury trial.
Also permitted will be a protection order filed by Marie Brinker against James Brinker which was found by DCI Agent Josh Twedt while he was executing a search warrant at Marie Brinker’s home on the day of her death.
Raleigh Hansman, one of Brinker’s attorneys, said during the hearing that the protection order should not be allowed as evidence because although Marie Brinker had signed the order, multiple sources said the handwriting throughout the petition was not hers and that the order was granted by agreement, rather than at a hearing or by James Brinker admitting to something.
Giles said that while the protection order needs to come into evidence, he needs additional time to review it before making a final decision on whether the petition will be allowed.
The court also granted the state’s motion to allow hearsay statements made by Marie Brinker. Those will include testimony of conversations from Jan Berkhout; Marie Brinker’s long-time friend, Michelle Ryan; and two acquaintances, April Bierema and Karen Tovsland. All said Thursday that Marie Brinker had told them of injuries James Brinker had inflicted on her, and many said they had seen bruising or other injuries.
Jan Berkhout said Thursday that the relationship between his daughter, known as “Mimi” by her family, and James Brinker had been “confused and unstable.” He said that Brinker once kicked Marie Brinker in the mouth to stop her from talking, but that “it didn’t count” because he could have kicked her much harder.
Berkhout also recalled speaking to his daughter while she was in a Sioux Falls hospital in 2017 and being told that she had been airlifted there because her husband had kicked her in the head, causing internal bleeding.
“He told me that all of Mimi’s injuries and medical problems were self-inflicted,” Berkhout said.
Recordings of two 911 calls from 2017 in which Marie Brinker can be heard crying and saying that James Brinker either had hurt or was going to hurt her were submitted into evidence, as was a series of text messages about James Brinker sent by Marie Brinker to Brodie Berkhout.
Those text messages, which Berkhout said during his testimony Thursday that he turned over to police, included statements such as “James … almost killed me” and “James was punching me and kicking me again and caused trauma to the head.”
Hansman argued prior to the court’s decision Friday that Marie Brinker may have given false information to those people in order to gain sympathy or otherwise benefit herself.
“There’s absolutely nothing in the record supporting this,” Mayer said.
Brinker’s other attorney, Chris Nipe, said Friday in support of a defense motion that there were several problems with the way Brinker was taken into custody and interviewed after Marie Brinker’s death, the first of which involved Brinker’s Miranda rights.
Nipe said that Det. Sgt. Dean Knippling and Det. Brian Larson’s testimonies indicated Brinker was in an interview room for multiple hours and was interviewed by both officers with breaks throughout. He said that meant that Brinker had not properly been Mirandized, as he was only read his rights once.
“At some point, this shifts from being one interview to being more than one interview,” Nipe said.
Deputy State’s Attorney Doug Barnett disagreed.
“There is absolutely no legal requirement to re-administer Miranda warnings after a 12-minute break or a two-minute break,” he said.
Additionally, Barnett said Brinker never requested a lawyer or asked to stop the questioning despite having had contact with police and being Mirandized several times prior.
Nipe said Brinker was illegally seized and that his behavior during the interview indicated that his statements were not given voluntarily. He argued that police picked Brinker up and did not allow him to leave despite not having any evidence linking him to Marie Brinker’s death, making any statements he made to them afterward inadmissible.
Giles, in explanation for denying that part of the motion, said it appeared that Brinker had been taken in for questioning as a person of interest and that he had gone voluntarily.
There was discussion throughout the hearing over whether Brinker’s behavior throughout the interview, which witnesses said included getting on the floor in a fetal position, yawning and crying without shedding tears, was due to theatrics or possible drug use. Giles ultimately sided with the state, saying that the behavior appeared to be theatrical and that drug use did not impact Brinker’s behavior or his ability to answer questions voluntarily.
Testimony and video taken from body cameras from several additional law enforcement officers from the Mitchell Police Division will be allowed in the trial, as granted by one or more of the motions addressed Thursday and Friday.
The only pieces of evidence the court specified would not be permitted during the trial were those related to Joel Reinesch, who was a sergeant for the Mitchell police at the time of Marie Brinker’s death and James Brinker’s arrest.
Giles said comments made to Reinesch by Brinker en route to the police station, as captured by a body camera recording, were unsolicited and would prejudice the jury against Brinker more than they would make a point necessary for the trial. He said that if Brinker were to take the stand during the trial, however, the state could potentially use that video as evidence of Brinker’s demeanor at the time.
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A recent study indicates that people in Buffalo County may have less access to healthy food than people in any other county in the country.
On Tuesday, the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps (CHR) program released its 2019 data, which ranks counties across the country in a variety of health-related categories, from air pollution to obesity.
One of those categories, which CHR calls the food environment index, is calculated on a scale from 0 to 10 that equally weighs the percentage of the county’s population that is low income and doesn’t live close to a grocery store and the percentage that didn’t have access to a reliable food source in the past year.
In the 2019 CHR, Buffalo County, in which the majority of the population lives on the Crow Creek Reservation, scored a 0. It’s the only county in the country to do so, but is followed closely by Oglala Lakota County, which scored a 0.2. The state’s average was 6.6, and counties with reservations within them had significantly lower scores, meaning the people there tend to be far less likely to be able to afford and otherwise access consistent, healthy food sources.
The Native American Heritage Association (NAHA) is one organization that delivers food, in addition to clothing and household items, to reservations. Tim Curns, director of operations, said the issue across multiple reservations when it comes to accessing food stems more from lack of income than lack of available food.
“Grocery stores (aren’t) the issue. It’s the funds, the money available. They get so much EBT, assistance from the state, and that probably only covers about three weeks, if that,” said Curns, referencing the government assistance many on tribal reservations receive. “It just depends on how many people are in the house, and stuff like that, and it’s not enough for the whole month. That’s why we try to help out as much as we can.”
In Buffalo County, 76 percent of the population qualifies for programs such as WIC or free school meals, and as of 2016, only three percent was above the income threshold that makes them ineligible for any nutrition assistance programs.
Curns said that NAHA works to fill the gap between what’s covered by benefits and income and what’s actually needed to keep people fed in a month.
And that gap is not a small one. Feeding South Dakota, a division of Feeding America, tracks what it calls the “meal gap,” or the difference between the number of meals per year that are needed to feed everyone in a county and the number of meals that are currently available.
According to the organization’s 2016 data, Buffalo County has a meal gap of 82,000 – the equivalent of every person in the county missing 40 meals per year.
While money is the primary issue standing in the way of keeping people in Crow Creek and other reservations well fed, distance is still a contributing factor to food insecurity.
Fort Thompson is the site of the only grocery store on the reservation. Excluding a couple of convenience stores, the next closest place to buy food is in Chamberlain, 22 miles south.
Curns said that as they’re in smaller towns, stores in Fort Thompson and Chamberlain tend to have higher prices. To find a grocery store with more affordable food, those who live on the Crow Creek Reservation – many of whom do not own vehicles – would have to go 50 miles west, to Pierre.
Buffalo County’s rank in terms of food accessibility varies slightly from list to list, depending on which organization is compiling the information and what criteria is used. But across any number of similar rankings in recent years, the counties in South Dakota that are home to tribal reservations are consistently among those with the lowest accessibility to healthy food close to home, both in the state and across the country.
While the county holds the most extreme spot in terms of CHR’s food environment index, it holds South Dakota’s fourth-highest spot on Feeding America’s list of food insecurity rates at 21.6 percent, based on 2016 data.
In total, five additional South Dakota counties – Oglala Lakota, Todd, Dewey, Corson and Ziebach – have food insecurity rates above 20 percent. Like Buffalo County, all are home to reservations. And though the six counties only contain 4.5 percent of the state’s population, they comprise 9.2 percent of the total meal gap.
Food isn’t the only health-related issue in Buffalo County. CHR’s statistics show that people in the county have more days of poor mental and physical health per year than many other counties across the state and tend to live shorter lives with more health problems.
At 62.6 years, Buffalo County’s average life expectancy is 16.4 years below the state average. The county also has the highest age-adjusted mortality rate in the state, meaning that more of its residents can be expected to die before age 75 than those in any other county.
CHR found that 41 percent of adults in Buffalo County are obese, 37 percent smoke and 35 percent aren’t getting enough sleep – all of which are between nine and 19 percent higher than the state’s averages.
Curns said the six reservations in South Dakota and two in Wyoming that NAHA serves all see the same problems that lead to such a great need for assistance.
“Crow Creek and Lower Brule are much smaller than the other reservations that we deliver to. They have a great need, no matter how small they are,” he said. “They all have the same kind of issues: very high unemployment; lots of grandparents taking care of children because the parents aren’t available. In proportion, it’s all the same as far as who we deliver to. It doesn’t matter the size.”
To alleviate some of that need, Feeding South Dakota gives food to NAHA, which then distributes it to the reservations. Curns estimated that a couple thousand people are served in Crow Creek every month. According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the tribe has an estimated population of 3,429.
Curns said NAHA prides itself on the fact that 96 cents out of every dollar donated is given back to the reservations, while the other four cents are used to operate the company. In January and February, 41,505 pounds of food were delivered to the Crow Creek Reservation, worth more than $65,000.
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After a legislative session riddled with disagreement on the issue, the state Senate’s failure to override Gov. Kristi Noem’s veto on Tuesday pushed the possibility of legalizing industrial hemp back until at least next year.
Most of the area’s legislators were in favor of H.B. 1191, and all but one of the legislators who represent districts in The Daily Republic’s coverage area voted consistently for the bill’s passage throughout the session.
Meanwhile, freshman Sen. Rocky Blare, R-Ideal, was one of the 13 senators statewide who voted against the veto override, and he has consistently voted against the bill.
“There’s a lot of people that think that I’m wrong – and maybe I am – that we’re probably going to be late to the game and not get this done, and it’s going to hinder our farmers’ processes and economic development in the state,” Blare told The Daily Republic in a phone interview Wednesday morning. “I heard a lot of people that had concerns about it, and I’ve heard people call me every name in the book for not doing it.”
Blare, a member of the Senate Agriculture and Resources Committee, said he’s not opposed to considering future bills legalizing hemp, but that several factors kept him from supporting the bill that was under consideration this year.
While he said he shared Noem’s concern that legalizing hemp could lead to legalizing marijuana and was wary of the $1.2 million the Legislative Research Council said the bill would cost the state, his primary concerns were those outlined in a presentation by the South Dakota Department of Public Safety that he said indicated legalizing hemp would lead to testing issues for law enforcement.
“The state’s attorney, attorney general, Department of Health were all against it, which are all big in my mind, so I’m not going to second guess or question their thoughts and their concerns about it,” Blare said. “They’ll never be 100 percent, but they understand that we want this to come in and (be done) legally, and we want to support our farmers and their ability to do this.”
However, Sen. Stace Nelson, R-Fulton, doesn’t think the issue of law enforcement potentially not being able to discern hemp from marijuana immediately was pressing enough to justify voting against the bill.
“Cocaine and some of these other refined drugs are a white, powdery substance,” Nelson said. “Are we supposed to outlaw flour? Are we supposed to outlaw sugar, salt, because you can’t tell from the naked eye whether that’s the illegal item? It’s ridiculous that we expended so much effort to try and keep a legal substance illegal because of the excuse that it’s difficult for law enforcement to tell it from its illegal cousin.”
Like others who advocated for the hemp bill throughout this year’s legislative session, Nelson said that being able to grow hemp would have had significant economic benefits for farmers in his district and across the state who are struggling with the markets for other crops.
Nelson also questioned Noem’s stance on hemp, saying that she supported the legalization as part of the recently passed federal farm bill but not as a proposal for South Dakota.
During a media call Wednesday afternoon, Noem said that asserting she’s taken opposing stances on hemp with the two bills is an inaccurate twisting of her words. She said the farm bill did not endorse or mandate the legalization of industrial hemp, but that she had supported its inclusion of a provision that allowed states to determine whether they would allow it.
“I fully support the fact that South Dakota should have been having this debate, and the fact that we did was entirely appropriate,” Noem said. “I know that many of the proponents of the hemp bill were twisting that and making it into something that wasn’t true.”
Noem said she asked legislators to wait to legalize industrial hemp until a point where USDA and FDA guidelines across the country were laid out and included regulations for CBD oil, which became a larger part of the bill as it made its way through the legislature.
“We do not have testing kits that we can utilize. We do not have room in our state lab to house the equipment we would need to purchase to handle this,” Noem said. “We have seen other states that are being sued because they haven’t conducted enforcement adequately, and it opens up a whole new realm of consequences that I just believe we can’t take a risk in the state of South Dakota.”
Nelson, meanwhile, feels that Noem, along with those who voted against overriding her veto of H.B. 1191, are making hollow excuses. He also said allowing farmers to grow hemp in South Dakota is not a new concept.
“During WWII, South Dakota and other states had massive hemp crops,” he said. “Basically, what we’re trying to do is get South Dakota back to its roots. Industrial hemp was grown by our founding fathers. It just does not make a lot of sense for these people who claim to be limited-government conservative Republicans to say that we need more government to keep people from growing illegal products.”
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At 31 years old, Nick Tischler has spent nearly a third of his life in prison for drug charges.
In a letter he sent to The Daily Republic recently, Tischler wrote that if presumptive probation had been in place when he was first sentenced at age 18, he might have been able to get treatment, rather than being sent somewhere he said did not rehabilitate him.
“The years in the penitentiary taught me the code of conduct, taught me the rules to survive in prison,” Tischler wrote from the Davison County Jail. “What it did not do is prepare me for the real world. It has absolutely crippled me, chastised me; realistically, it institutionalized me.”
Presumptive probation was one of many changes made to the state’s criminal justice system as part of Senate Bill 70, also known as the Public Safety Improvement Act, which was passed in 2013. Now, it’s written into South Dakota law that courts are to sentence people convicted of a Class 5 or 6 felony to probation, unless there are aggravating circumstances in the case or if the person being sentenced is otherwise ineligible for probation.
Tischler was discharged from the Department of Corrections in May of 2018 but was arrested a total of four times in November and December. He’s now spent several months in the Davison County Jail as he awaits trial for charges of possession of a controlled substance, forgery and possession of an invalid license.
“If I was condemned at 18 years old to be broken and penitentiary bound, should one expect a rehabilitated me or a broken me after 10 years inside the South Dakota (State) Penitentiary?” Tischler wrote.
South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg has made repealing presumptive probation one of his top priorities since he took office in January, arguing that the statute restricts power from law enforcement and courts.
But Senate Bill 19, which would have been a step toward implementing the repeal, failed with an 18-12 Senate vote on Feb. 22.
Ravnsborg told The Daily Republic in December, before he took office, that he admired SB 70’s goal of decreasing the state’s prison population, but that it had not been effective. He also said that by repealing presumptive probation, he hoped to use the possibility of prison time to incentivize lower-level drug offenders to work with law enforcement to track down and put away drug dealers.
Legislators estimated prior to the vote on SB 19 that repealing presumptive probation would cost the state an additional $4 million per year to house additional inmates, and with current facilities nearing capacity, an additional prison would have to be constructed, at an estimated cost of $14 million.
Ron Freeman, chief court services officer for South Dakota’s First Judicial Circuit, said that he’s seen an uptick in the number of people on probation in the circuit since SB 70 was passed, estimating the number of those on probation has increased by about 10 to 15 percent.
“I think we would definitely see an increase in the number of offenders sentenced to the penitentiary and, from what I am hearing, most likely a need for the state to build additional prison space,” Freeman said on what might happen if presumptive probation were repealed.
Freeman said that in fiscal year 2017, it cost $75.83 per day to house one inmate in the South Dakota State Penitentiary. Some of the state’s other facilities, however, cost significantly less.
In South Dakota, people on probation don’t have to pay supervision fees on top of their court-ordered fines and other payments, but the average daily cost to supervise someone on probation is $3.74, according to Freeman
As of Feb. 12, 13.64 percent of the state’s prisoners were incarcerated for possession of a controlled substance in schedules I or II, a Class 5 felony which includes the possession of drugs such as methamphetamine, according to the South Dakota Department of Corrections. More people are in prison for that charge than for any other.
The next most-represented charge in South Dakota’s prisons is unauthorized ingestion of a controlled substance in schedules I or II – also a Class 5 felony – of which an additional 9.48 percent of all inmates were convicted.
For those two charges, 890 people are currently serving time in one of South Dakota’s prisons – more than are incarcerated for rape, robbery, murder, manslaughter and burglary combined.
In total, drug offenders make up just under a third of the state’s current prison population, and 82 percent of those offenders are serving time for violating one of South Dakota’s 15 Class 5 or 6 felony drug statutes.
At the end of January, there were 2,930 people in South Dakota on either parole or supervision for a suspended sentence, meaning about 43 percent of people who have been convicted of a crime and haven’t yet completed their sentences are not currently serving prison time.
Freeman said that although slightly more people may be on probation now, because the Department of Social Services administers many of the community-based treatment programs implemented by SB 70, such as drug courts, Cognitive Behavioral Interventions for Substance Abuse (CBISA) and Moral Reconation Therapy (MRT), court services has not seen a drastic change in workload.
Freeman thinks it’s beneficial to send people to treatment programs rather than prison, though it depends on the person.
“People need to remember that prisons are for punishment,” he said. “Drug Court programs are intended to provide rehabilitation in the community with the additional expectation of accountability.”
Since May 2015, 25 people have graduated from the James Valley Drug and DUI Court, which meets regularly in Davison County. Of those 25, two are currently in prison for offenses committed after their graduation, and one is currently awaiting sentencing for drug charges.
Freeman also said that while presumptive probation does place some restrictions on sentencing, most people who have been placed on probation under it would have been placed on probation anyway if presumptive probation were not in place, and those who violate probation or commit subsequent offenses are not exempt from going to prison.
“Some of the folks that are on presumptive probation are under the impression that, ‘Well, I can’t go to the penitentiary because I’m on presumptive probation, and the court doesn’t have a choice,'” Freeman said. “Well we do have a choice, and if you aren’t going to follow the rules and we bring you back into court on a probation violation maybe once or twice, eventually the judge will get tired of seeing you, and you will go to the penitentiary.”
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On the night of Oct. 5, 2015, Todd Long said he felt the way someone explained the sensation of a heart attack to him: like an elephant was sitting on his chest.
Earlier that night, he had come home planning to draw up divorce papers with his now-ex-wife, Dawn Long, with whom he had been discussing divorce since around March of that year.
Long had made himself a drink that evening and thought the rum he used didn’t taste quite right. He made a second drink and said that when he poured it out, Dawn Long got angry with him.
After Dawn Long went to bed, Todd Long went outside, and he soon started throwing up.
“I just thought maybe I was getting sick or something,” he told The Daily Republic on Friday, a day after Dawn Long agreed to a plea deal that could land her in prison for up to eight years for her actions against her former husband.
As the hours went on during that October day, Todd Long started to lose vision and couldn’t breathe while lying down. Long said it became clear that something wasn’t right. He threw up several times in the bathroom, outside Dawn Long’s bedroom, and he said that she never came out of her room. He eventually called a friend and went to the hospital.
“Right when I said, ‘I think she’s trying to poison me,’ the nurse walked in and heard it,” Todd Long said. “And she said, ‘Either you’re calling it in or I’m calling it in.'”
The friend who had helped Long get to the hospital eventually called the police. In the following months, Dawn Long was charged with attempted first-degree murder in connection with the incident. It wasn’t long before her arrest in December 2015 that Todd Long learned that caffeine had been what caused him to feel like he was having a heart attack.
She was later also charged with reckless burning for allegedly setting fire to the house where she and Todd Long had planned to continue living after their divorce for the benefit of their son, who was in sixth grade at the time.
Todd Long has mostly declined comment on the case, but on Friday he sat down with The Daily Republic to give his account of the near-death experience and the long, drawn-out situation with his ex-wife.
Their house has been boarded up and unoccupied for more than three years, and during most of that time, Dawn Long has been out on bond. Since her arrest, she’s moved to Ethan and had a baby, and Todd Long says the thought of running into his ex-wife in public makes him anxious.
“I’ve actually quit going to Walmart, because that’s where she usually shopped. The possibility of running into her coming around an aisle would’ve been more than enough,” he said.
On Thursday, after having pleaded not guilty to both charges for more than three years, Dawn Long pleaded no contest to aggravated assault, and the state dropped the original charges. She’ll be sentenced on April 30, and the court agreed Thursday to a maximum possible sentence of 15 years in prison with seven years suspended.
Todd Long said he hoped to testify at a jury trial that Dawn Long’s actions were planned well in advance and were not the impulsive decisions of an emotional person.
“Even though, in the past, she hasn’t had a criminal record, this wasn’t just an, ‘Oh, I got emotional and I grabbed a hammer and hit him over the head.’ That would’ve been more explainable than this whole plan she had,” he said. “Everything was planned out.”
Todd Long said that plan went as far back as when divorce was first discussed. At that time, he said, Dawn Long began telling people she had a brain tumor. Todd Long said he became skeptical of this a few weeks before she purchased caffeine pills in July.
“In between the poisoning and getting out and having a house fire, the odd twist is, she’s faking cancer, they found out that I had cancer,” Todd Long said.
Dawn Long’s attorney did not respond to a message from The Daily Republic for comment on this story.
Todd Long said that while the past three years have been emotional for him and his now-15-year-old son, he’s grateful to the members of the Mitchell Police Division and Mitchell Fire Department for their work on the case, as well as to his friends, family and others in Mitchell who have helped them.
Todd Long said he’ll presumably have more to say on the case following April 30, the day he will finally have closure on the series of events that turned a plan to file for divorce into a criminal investigation that’s now affected him for nearly three and a half years.
“We were getting divorced. Somewhere along the line, her plan changed,” he said.
Read the original story here.
A Douglas County court addressed Thursday morning a multi-million-dollar foreclosure case involving thousands of head of cattle, a car crash and at least enough interested parties to fill a courtroom.
The case was brought by First Dakota National Bank against Robert and Becky Blom, of Corsica, on Feb. 8. The bank’s complaint asserts that the Bloms had overdrawn their account by more than $1 million and that, in combination with Robert Blom’s incapacitation following a car crash last week, was enough for the bank to consider itself insecure.
In addition to the bank, nine law firms filed notices of appearances in the case representing 17 additional parties. However, it’s currently unknown just how many parties will be involved in the case or how much money is owed, as not all parties have yet been identified. Parties in attendance at the hearing declined to comment on the case to The Daily Republic.
As of Feb. 7, the complaint stated that the Bloms owed a principal amount of $6,748,600.92 in notes and an additional $792.75 per day in accrued interest on those notes.
While it’s not yet known how much money the Bloms could owe in total to all parties, court documents indicate that one company – Gader Livestock LLC, of North Dakota – had entered into a sales contract on Jan. 26 in which the Bloms had agreed to pay $269,674.26 for 146 steers and 120 heifers.
Robert Blom was arrested and charged with a first-offense DUI on Feb. 5 after he was involved in a crash and gave a preliminary breath test of 0.18 when he was booked into the Davison County Jail. According to a probable cause affidavit, Blom’s family members indicated to law enforcement that he had “told them they would be better off without him being around.”
An affidavit filed by Wayne Williamson, the bank’s senior vice president, the same day as the complaint stated that a loan officer had been “advised by Robert Blom that he has prepared false documentation to customers for approximately three to four years” and that all of the Blom’s assets will have to be liquidated to satisfy the bank and other creditors’ claims.
That affidavit, which also asserted that Blom had moved additional cattle, was the catalyst that motivated the bank to request the implementation of a receiver to speed things along.
Lew Dirks, a Sioux Falls-based investigator, was appointed as the receiver in the case and will ensure that the cattle are cared for, determine what cattle belongs to each party, be responsible for moving and liquidating the cattle involved and take legal action as needed to repay debts and get information as needed, as well as other investigative tasks.
The case will move forward once Dirks identifies more of its components. Multiple attorneys told The Daily Republic that they could not comment on the scope of the case because they have only just gotten involved and currently only know the specifics of their clients’ side.
More than 50 people were present at the Douglas County Courthouse for Thursday’s hearing, during which the Bloms were determined to have defaulted in the foreclosure by not responding to the complaint. Members of the Blom family were present in the courtroom, but attorneys said they had not heard anything from anyone claiming to represent them.
Dirks testified Thursday that based on the conversations he’s had with interested parties over the course of several days, he’s currently estimating that this case involves 31,450 head of cattle. On three feedlots, he said he’s found 4,953 head in total and has heard rumors of an additional 2,400 being moved before he got involved with the case.
“Those numbers are moving daily,” he said. “Since Friday afternoon, it went from 10,000 to 31,000, as of (Wednesday) night.”
Dirks said he expects to have to file additional suits to get information on cattle sales and trucking records for any cattle that may have recently been moved. He said that he’s currently aware of seven legally-binding contracts that included Robert Blom’s signature and that for those, there is currently enough fat cattle to fulfill one and possibly part of a second one, and that he thinks it would be in the involved parties’ best interests to have the remaining cattle liquidated, which he hopes to have done within 30 days.
“I think the receiver needs to act as expeditiously as possible,” Judge Bruce Anderson said early in the hearing. “The cattle – they can’t stay out there forever. Some of them are ripe for market. They’ve got to go.”
To track cattle as much as possible, Dirks said he’ll be using brands, tags and veterinary information, as well as information from claimants. To gather invoices or other information from the Bloms’ business, the court ordered Todd Cowman, who owns and operates an IT business in Yankton, to complete imaging of the Bloms’ hard drive on Thursday.
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