Attorneys for Briley Piper, South Dakota’s only death row inmate, took their claim that his first attorney had failed to provide adequate defense when he was convicted to a federal judge in Sioux Falls on Friday.
Piper was sentenced to death in the 2000 torture murder of Chester Allan Poage near Spearfish. His latest appeal says his initial court-appointed attorney didn’t do his due diligence by failing to have a variety of assessments conducted on Piper, including fetal alcohol syndrome.
The appeal argues that knowing more about Piper’s cognitive and neurological situation could have affected the outcome of the trial.
Attorney General Marty Jackley countered that assessments that were completed on Piper, finding ADHD and pointing to a conduct disorder and to the use of drugs. Jackley said Piper had a college degree and a high IQ, and that he either didn’t have fetal alcohol syndrome or that it simply wasn’t a factor in his behavior or in Poague’s death.
Both sides have 21 days to submit written briefs. The judge said he will issue a written opinion “fairly shortly after briefing,” adding that “the case has languished (and) the court’s intention is to not delay.”
Briley Piper was one of 3 mens convicted of killing Chester Allen Poague. He pled guilty and waived a jury sentencing, with the judge handing down a death sentence.
Piper appealed and the South Dakota Supreme Court overturned the sentence in 2009, finding that a U-S Supreme Court decision required a jury and not a judge to issue such sentences. A jury did just that in 2011 and the sentence was upheld in 2019.
Elijah Paige pled guilty, was sentenced to death by the judge, and was executed in 2007, the first person to be executed in South Dakota since 1947 and the first to die by lethal injection
Darrell Hoadley was the first of the 3 contacted by police and confessed to the killing. He pled not guilty to 1st-degree murder and was convicted by a jury that then split 8-4 in favor of life in prison, a sentence he continues to serve.