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It’s been just under two years since Merle Northrup was convicted of stealing more than $400,000 worth of grain from a Mount Vernon farming family.
After a year and a half in prison and about five months on parole, Northrup, 50, says he’s living from one two-week paycheck advance to another and expects to spend the rest of his life repaying restitution for a crime he told The Daily Republic he didn’t commit.
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There are currently 68 registered sex offenders living within the Mitchell city limits, 12 of whom have been on the registry for more than 25 years.
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ARMOUR — A year after it was filed, a Douglas County foreclosure case involving millions of dollars and thousands of nonexistent cattle is awaiting a new judge.
During what was originally scheduled to be a hearing to address payment of agister’s liens, Judge Bruce Anderson, who has handled the case against Robert and Becky Blom since it was filed by First Dakota National Bank on Feb. 8, 2019, recused himself on Thursday afternoon, stating the case is so complicated it requires the attention of a judge who has more time.
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Fewer people died in crashes in 2019 than in any other recent year in South Dakota, but the state still lags behind the rest of the country in its implementation of highway safety laws.
Last week, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a nationwide organization that promotes the passage of federal and state laws as a means of preventing crashes, released a report that ranked each state by how closely its laws matched those the organization recommended, including those related to age restrictions, seat belt and car seat usage and distracted driving.
The report found that South Dakota currently has two of those 16 recommended laws in place, fewer than any other state in the country.
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More at-risk South Dakota youth successfully completed diversion programs in 2019 than in any other year since juvenile justice reforms went into effect, according to a report issued last week.
The report is the fourth issued since the formation of the South Dakota Juvenile Justice Oversight Council in 2015, when the state passed the Juvenile Justice Public Safety Improvement Act, which was aimed at finding community-based alternatives to Department of Corrections supervision for minors.
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The South Dakota Supreme Court issued an opinion Wednesday upholding circuit court and Department of Labor decisions not to require an employer and its insurer to compensate a Hutchinson County man for a 2016 knee replacement.
The court held that Alan Armstrong’s fall while working at Longview Farm was not the only or major contributing cause of his need for knee replacement surgery, citing years of existing osteoarthritis and other medical history.
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OLIVET — The city of Tripp’s former finance officer was sentenced Monday morning to three years in prison for embezzling more than half a million dollars between 2011 and 2018.
Jennifer Friederich will be parole eligible for the offense after serving 25 percent of her sentence, and Judge Patrick Smith said at sentencing he didn’t expect her to be denied parole at that time considering her three convictions were for nonviolent offenses and she has no prior criminal history.
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SPRINGFIELD — For the first time since it was discovered that its former finance officer spent two years embezzling money with an illegally obtained debit card, the city of Springfield balanced its budget in December.
Throughout that same time span, the city has worked to put new safeguards in place and reinforce existing checks and balances to ensure it won’t again see what current finance officer Tiffany Balvin told The Daily Republic was the perfect storm of improper documentation and a lax chain of command.
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CHAMBERLAIN — A Chamberlain man was sentenced Thursday afternoon to 22 years in prison for killing a man in June 2018.
Nicholas Yellow Lodge, 20, pleaded guilty but mentally ill to the first-degree manslaughter of 77-year-old David Hart in September and will be evaluated at the Human Services Center in Yankton prior to beginning his prison sentence.
In a 25-minute hearing at the Brule County Courthouse, Yellow Lodge was sentenced to 30 years in prison with eight years suspended and given credit for the year and a half he’s spent in jail since his arrest. He is the first person convicted of first-degree manslaughter in Brule County in more than 30 years.
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A Mitchell man was sentenced Tuesday afternoon to serve 18 years in prison for killing his wife in 2017.
James Brinker, 41, was given credit for the more than two years he spent in the Davison County Jail between his October 2017 arrest for the death of 36-year-old Marie Brinker and his sentencing, where 22 years of a 40-year sentence were suspended as part of an agreement Brinker made with the state when he pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter on Oct. 29.
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