south dakota death row | My Crime Library

Donald Moeller South Dakota Execution

Donald Moeller was executed by the State of South Dakota for the kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of a nine year old girl. According to court documents Donald Moeller would kidnap nine year old Becky O’Connell when she was leaving a convenience store. Becky O’Connell would be sexually assaulted and stabbed to death. Donald Moeller would be arrested after his DNA tied him to the murder. Donald Moeller would be sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection on October 30 2012

Donald Moeller More News

A South Dakota inmate was executed Tuesday night for the 1990 rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl who disappeared after leaving her home to buy sugar at a nearby store so she could make lemonade.

Donald Moeller, 60, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls, marking South Dakota’s second execution this month in an unusual surge for a state that has carried out just two other death sentences since 1913. He was pronounced dead at 10:24 p.m.

Moeller kidnapped Becky O’Connell from a Sioux Falls convenience store, where she’d gone to buy sugar to make lemonade at home. He drove her to a secluded area near the Big Sioux River, then raped and stabbed the girl. Her naked body was found the next day; investigators said her throat had been slashed.

Becky’s mother, Tina Curl, has been steadfast in her wish to watch Moeller die, even raising funds to cover the expenses to make the 1,400-mile trip from her home in New York state to Sioux Falls for the execution.

“He watched my daughter take her last breath. I want to watch him take his last breath,” Curl told The Associated Press in August. “I’m doing this for her and for me.”

Moeller initially was convicted in 1992, but the state Supreme Court overturned it, ruling that improper evidence was used at trial. He was again convicted and sentenced to die in 1997. The state Supreme Court affirmed the sentence, and Moeller lost appeals on both the state and federal levels

Though he fought his conviction and sentence for years, Moeller in July he said he was ready to accept death as the consequence of his actions. He admitted for the first time in court that he killed the girl.

“I killed. I deserve to be killed,” he said.

But even as Moeller insisted he was ready to die, several motions were filed on his behalf to stop the execution despite his protests.

Earlier this month, a federal judge dismissed a pending suit challenging South Dakota’s execution protocol after Moeller insisted he wanted no part of it. Moeller also distanced himself from a motion filed by a woman with loose family ties who argued that his decades in solitary confinement had made him incapable of voluntarily accepting his fate. That motion was dismissed Monday.

Moeller’s execution comes just two weeks after the Oct. 15 execution of Eric Robert for killing South Dakota prison guard Ronald “R.J.” Johnson during a failed escape attempt. Before that, the last execution in South Dakota was in 2007, when Elijah Page died by lethal injection for the murder of Chester Allan Poage, who was abducted and killed in a scheme to burglarize his mother’s home.

In 1947, George Sitts was electrocuted for killing two law enforcement officers. And in 1913, Joseph Rickman was hanged for the murder of a woman and her daughter.

They were among 17 inmates executed since 1877, the oldest of which came during the days of the Dakota Territory.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/south-dakota-executes-donald-moeller-for-rape-murder-of-9-year-old-girl/

Eric Robert South Dakota Execution

Eric Robert was executed by the State of South Dakota for the murder of a prison guard. According to court documents Eric Roberts and Rodney Berget during an escape attempt would murder a prison guard, Ronald “RJ” Johnson with a metal pipe. Eric Robert and Rodney Berget would be both sentenced to death. Rodney Berget was executed in 2018. Eric Robert would be executed by lethal injection on October 16, 2012

Eric Robert More News

A South Dakota man who beat a prison guard with a pipe and covered his head in plastic wrap to kill him during a failed escape attempt was put to death Monday, in the state’s first execution since 2007.

Eric Robert, 50, received lethal injection and was pronounced dead at the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls. He is the first South Dakota inmate to die under the state’s new single-drug lethal injection method, and only the 17th person to be executed in the state or Dakota Territory since 1877.

Robert was put to death in the same prison where he killed guard Ronald “RJ” Johnson during an escape attempt on April 12, 2011. Robert was serving an 80-year sentence on a kidnapping conviction when he tried to break out with fellow inmate Rodney Berget, 50.

Johnson was working alone the morning of his death — also his 63rd birthday — in a part of the prison known as Pheasantland Industries, where inmates work on upholstery, signs, custom furniture and other projects. Authorities said the inmates beat Johnson with a pipe, covered his head in plastic wrap and left his body on the floor.

Robert then put on Johnson’s pants, hat and jacket and approached the prison’s west gate. With his head down, he pushed a cart loaded with two boxes. Berget was hidden in one of the boxes, according to a report filed by a prison worker after the slaying

Other guards became suspicious as the men got closer to the gate. When confronted, Robert beat one guard; other guards quickly arrived and detained both inmates.

Months later, Robert told a judge his only regret was that he hadn’t killed more guards. He pleaded guilty to Johnson’s slaying and asked to be sentenced to death, telling a judge last October that he would otherwise kill again. He never appealed his sentence and even tried to bypass a mandatory state review in hopes of expediting his death.

Berget also has pleaded guilty in the killing, but has appealed his death sentence. A third inmate, Michael Nordman, 47, was given a life sentence for providing materials used in the slaying.

Robert’s execution could be the first of two in as many weeks. Donald Moeller is scheduled to be put to death the week of Oct. 28 for the 1990 kidnapping, rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl. Robert had been on death row only for about a year, Moeller has been there for more than two decades. Only three other inmates currently are on the state’s death row.

South Dakota’s last execution before Monday took place in 2007, and that was the first in the state for 60 years.

“You have few people on death row, few executions, and then you have this coincidence of cases coming all at once,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center. “When people waive appeals, their cases start to move more quickly.”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/10/15/sd-death-row-inmate-to-be-executed-monday/1635505/

Rodney Berget South Dakota Execution

Rodney Berget was executed by the State of South Dakota for the murder of a prison guard during an escape. According to court documents Rodney Berget would fatally beat a prison guard, Ronald “R.J.” Johnson, with a pipe. Rodney Berget would be executed on October 29, 2018. Rodney Berget brother Roger Berget was executed in Oklahoma on June 8. 2000.

Rodney Berget More News

Rodney Berget lives in a single cell on South Dakota’s death row, rarely leaving the tiny room where he awaits execution for bludgeoning a prison guard to death with a pipe during an attempted escape.

For Berget’s immediate family, his fate is familiar. He is the second member of the clan to be sentenced to death. His older brother was convicted in 1987 of killing a man for his car. Roger Berget spent 13 years on Oklahoma’s death row until his execution in 2000 at age 39.

The Bergets are not the first pair of siblings to be condemned. In at least three cases, brothers who conspired to commit crimes both have received the death penalty. But these two stand out because their crimes were separated by more than 600 miles and 25 years.

“To have it in different states in different crimes is some sort of commentary on the family there,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which tracks death penalty trends

The siblings’ journey from the poverty of their South Dakota childhood to stormy, crime-ridden adult lives shows the far-reaching effects of a damaged upbringing — and the years of havoc wrought by two men who developed what the courts called a wanton disregard for human life.

Rodney Berget is scheduled to die (Oct. 29, 2018), potentially ending the odyssey that began when the two boys were born into a family that already had four kids.

A former prison principal described Rodney as a “throwaway kid” who never had a chance at a productive life. A lawyer for Roger recalled him as an “ugly duckling” with little family support.

The boys were born after the family moved 20 miles from their failed South Dakota farm to Aberdeen. Roger arrived in 1960. Rodney came two years later.

Patriarch Benford Berget went to work for the state highway department after his farming dreams were dashed. Rosemary Berget took a night job as a bar manager at a Holiday Inn.

Loss of the farm and new city surroundings seemed to strain the family and the couple’s marriage. When the family moved to town, “things kind of fell apart,” Bonnie Engelhart, the eldest Berget sibling, testified in 1987

Benford Berget, away on business, was rarely around. When he was home, he drank and become physically abusive, lawyers for the brothers later said.

By the 1970s, the couple divorced, and Roger and Rodney started getting into trouble. Roger skipped school. Rodney started stealing. Soon, they were taking cars. Both went to prison for the first time as teens.

Roger Berget enjoyed rare freedom in 1982 and met a woman while hitchhiking. The two started a relationship, and the woman gave birth to a child the next year. But Roger didn’t get to see his son often because he was soon behind bars again, this time in Oklahoma. And for a far more sinister crime.

oger and a friend, Michael Smith, wanted to steal a car from outside an Oklahoma City grocery store. The two men spotted 33-year-old Rick Patterson leaving the store on an October night in 1985. After abducting him at gunpoint, they put Patterson in the trunk and decided to kill him so he wouldn’t identify his captors.

They drove the car to a deserted spot outside the city and shot Patterson in the back of the head and neck, blowing away the lower half of his face.

A year later, Berget pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to death March 12, 1987. An appeals court threw out a death sentence for Smith, who was later sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Fewer than three months after Roger was sentenced to death, Rodney Berget, then 25 and serving time for grand theft and escape, joined five other inmates in breaking out of the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls.

The men greased their bodies with lotion, slipped through a hole in an air vent and then cut through window bars in an auto body shop at the prison. Berget was a fugitive for more than a month.

Thirteen years passed before Roger Berget was executed by lethal injection June 8, 2000. His brother remained in prison in South Dakota.

Then, in 2002, the younger Berget was released. His sister and her husband threw Rodney a birthday party when he turned 40. But the good days were numbered. A year later, he was sentenced to life in prison for attempted murder and kidnapping. He headed back to the state penitentiary — this time for good.

Then Rodney got to talking with a fellow inmate named Eric Robert about a goal they shared: to escape — or die trying.

The plan was months in the making. The inmates figured they would corner a solitary guard — any guard would do — and beat him with a pipe before covering his face with plastic wrap.

Once the guard was dead, Robert would put on the dead man’s uniform and push a box with Berget inside as the prison gates opened for a daily delivery. The two would slip through the walls unnoticed.

The morning of April 12, 2011, Ronald “R.J.” Johnson was alone in a part of the prison where inmates work on upholstery, signs, custom furniture and other projects. Johnson wasn’t supposed to be working that day — it was his 63rd birthday. He came in because of a scheduling change.

After attacking Johnson, Robert and Berget made it outside one gate. But they were stopped by another guard before the second gate. Both pleaded guilty.

In a statement to a judge, Rodney acknowledged he deserved to die.

I knew what I was doing, and I continued to do it,” Berget said. “I destroyed a family. I took away a father, a husband, a grandpa.”

His execution, scheduled for September, is likely to be delayed to allow the state Supreme Court time to conduct a mandatory review.

Rodney Berget’s lawyer, Jeff Larson, has declined to comment outside of court. Rodney did not respond to letters.

The few members of the Berget family who survive are reluctant to talk about how the boys became petty criminals and then convicted killers of the rarest kind: brothers sentenced to death.

https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/crime/2018/10/28/rodney-berget-executed-18-years-after-his-brother-met-same-fate-south-dakota-death-penalty/1803905002/

Charles Rhines South Dakota Execution

Charles Rhines was executed by the South Dakota government for a robbery murder committed in 1992. According to court documents Charles Rhines would go to his former place of work and during the commission of a robbery would stab to death Donnivan Schaefer. Charles Rhines would be executed on November 4, 2019

Charles Rhines More News

A convicted killer who fatally stabbed a former co-worker during a 1992 burglary used his last words Monday to speak directly to the parents of his victim, saying he forgave them “for your anger and hatred towards me.” But the victim’s parents refused to acknowledge the man who killed their son, instead focusing on the young man whom they called a blessing.

Charles Rhines was executed by lethal injection at 7:39 p.m., after the U.S. Supreme Court denied to halt his execution despite three late appeals.

“Ed and Peggy Schaeffer, I forgive you for your anger and hatred toward me,” Rhines said, before thanking his defense team. “I pray to God that he forgives you for your anger and hatred toward me. Thanks to my team. I love you all, goodbye. Let’s go. That’s all I have to say. Goodbye.”

Rhines, 63, ambushed 22-year-old Donnivan Schaefer in 1992 when Schaefer surprised him while he was burglarizing a Rapid City doughnut shop where Schaeffer worked. Rhines had been fired a few weeks earlier.

Rhines ambushed him, stabbing him in the stomach. Bleeding from his wound, Schaeffer begged to be taken to a hospital, vowing to keep silent about the crime; instead, he was forced into a storeroom, tied up and stabbed to death.

Steve Allender, a Rapid City police detective at the time of the killing who is now the city’s mayor, said Rhines’ jury sentenced him to death partly because of Rhines’ “chilling laughter” as he described Schaeffer’s death spasms.

“I watched the jury as they listened to the confession of Charles Rhines on audiotape and their reaction to his confession was appropriate. Any human being would be repulsed by the things he said and the way he said them,” Allender told KELO.

The Schaeffers made clear they didn’t want to talk about Rhines. Patty Schaeffer appeared before reporters holding a photo of her two sons, including Donnivan, as children, and then displayed a graduation photo of him.

“We were so blessed to have this young man in our family and in our life,” she said. “Today is the day that we talk about Donavan, the guy who loved his family, his fiancé, and his friends.”

Media witnesses to the execution said Rhines appeared calm, and it took only about a minute for the pentobarbital used by the state to take effect. They said when he finished speaking, he closed his eyes, then blinked, breathed heavily and died.

Rhines had challenged the state’s use of pentobarbital, arguing it wasn’t the ultra-fast-acting drug he was entitled to. A circuit judge ruled it was as fast or faster than other drugs when used in lethal doses and speculated that Rhines wanted only to delay his execution.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected that appeal, as well as his arguments that he was sentenced to die by a jury with an anti-gay bias and that he wasn’t given access to experts who could have examined him for cognitive and psychiatric impairments.

Pentobarbital was used last year when South Dakota executed Rodney Berget, who killed a prison guard during a 2011 escape attempt. Berget was pronounced dead 12 minutes after the lethal injection began, and a transcript released afterward said Berget asked after the injection was administered: “Is it supposed to feel like that?” His comment prompted a national group that studies capital punishment to call on the state to release more details about the drug used.

After attending Schaeffer’s funeral, Rhines moved to Seattle. Authorities thought the move was odd because Rhines had vowed to never return to Washington state, where he had spent time in prison. Allender said authorities initially interviewed Rhines and felt something was off, but Rhines wasn’t arrested until four months later, after Rhines told his former roommate about the killing.

Rhines wrote to the Argus Leader in May 2013, saying that when he saw a grieving mother on the news in an unrelated case, he realized what he had done to Schaeffer’s mother.

“Just at the cusp of her beloved child becoming an independent person, a responsible adult with a family and friends surrounding him and his mother waiting expectantly for grandchildren to spoil, having all that snatched away for almost no reason at all and the hole it has had to have left in her heart,” he wrote. “Prosecutors talk of closure, but that wound will never close, no matter how long it is there.”

Peggy Schaeffer, Donnivan’s mother, rejected the words as insincere.

Schaeffer’s family declined to speak with The Associated Press in advance of Rhines’ execution. In June, when a judge scheduled the execution, Peggy Schaeffer told reporters, “This step was one big one for justice for Donnivan. It’s just time.”

In the afternoon, about 30 protesters gathered in snow flurries outside the state prison where Rhines was to be executed, praying and singing hymns. Denny Davis, director of South Dakotans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, said they accept Rhines’ execution but hope to steer public opinion against capital punishment.

“It is about a culture shift and changing the values of people,” he said. “Why would we want to put this person to death when society is already safe?”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/south-dakota-execution-today-charles-rhines-executed-for-fatally-stabbing-co-worker-2019-11-04/

Briley Piper South Dakota Death Row

Briley Piper is the only death row inmate in South Dakota. Briley Piper was sentenced to death for the murder of Chester Poage. According to court documents Elijah Page, Briley Piper, and Darrell Hoadley,would rob the Poage home after they tortured and murdered Chester Poage. Elijah Page and Briley Piper would be sentenced to death while Darrell Hoadley would be sentenced to life in prison without parole. E;ijah Page was executed on July 11, 2007.

South Dakota Death Row Inmate List

Briley Piper 2021 Information

Age 41

Race White

Gender Male

Hair Color Red or Auburn

Eye Color Green

Height 5′ 8″ Weight 221 lbs.

Alias(es) Piper, Briley

Briley Piper Other News

On March 12-13, 2000, Briley Piper and two others, Elijah Page (Page) and Darrell Hoadley (Hoadley), kidnapped and killed Chester Allan Poage (Poage) so that they could steal property from the home Poage lived in with his mother and sister in Spearfish, South Dakota.

[¶ 3.] Briley Piper, Page and Hoadley, all of whom were friends with each other and with Poage, met up with Poage at approximately 8:00 p.m. on March 12, 2000. Piper had informed another friend, Nathan Whartman (Whartman), that Poage would give him a ride to the Job Corps facilities. Poage complied with the request for the ride, and he, along with Piper, Page and Hoadley, picked Whartman up and dropped Whartman off at Job Corps. The remaining four then went to Poage’s house and played PlayStation games.¹ While there, Piper, Page and Hoadley convinced Poage to leave his house, and the four left in Poage’s 1997 Chevrolet Blazer.² All four ended up at the house in which Piper, Page and Hoadley had been staying.

[¶ 4.] Once there, Page exposed a .22 caliber pistol, which he had stolen from Poage’s mother’s room at the Poage residence, and ordered Poage to get on the floor. Once Poage was on the floor, Piper kicked him in the face, knocking him unconscious. While Poage was unconscious, he was tied up with a cord and sat upright in a chair. After he regained consciousness, Piper laid a tire iron across his feet to prevent him from moving, while Page made him drink a mixture containing crushed pills, beer and hydrochloric acid. During this time, Poage begged for an explanation as to why his alleged friends were doing this. In response, Page hit him in the face and told him to “shut up.” While Piper and Page discussed their plan to kill Poage, which included slitting the victim’s throat, Poage pleaded for his life and offered to give them everything he owned in exchange for his release. At this point, Page asked Poage for the personal identification number for his ATM card, and Poage gave it to him.

[¶ 5.] Next, the group escorted Poage to his own vehicle, placed him in the back seat and threatened his life if he attempted to escape. Briley Piper got in the driver’s seat. The group stopped at a gas station, and then Piper drove the group to Higgins Gulch in the Black Hills, a wooded area about seven miles away from the house where Piper, Page, and Hoadley had been staying. Upon arriving at Higgins Gulch, the group forced Poage out of his vehicle into twelve-inch deep snow. Poage was forced by Piper and Page to take off all of his clothes, except his tank-top style undershirt, shoes, and socks in temperatures of about twenty-five degrees Fahrenheit. The three young men then took Poage’s wallet.

[¶ 6.] Thereafter, the three tried holding Poage down and covering him up with snow. Poage was then escorted to an icy creek, just over fifty feet from the road they had driven on to reach the gulch. Page and Piper admitted kicking him numerous times in various parts of his body and head. At one point in the attack, Poage did try to escape, but upon Piper’s urging, Page recaptured him and continued to beat his near-naked body in the freezing temperatures. Poage was also made to lie in the icy creek water for a lengthy period of time. Piper later stated he had kicked Poage at the gulch a couple of times in the body and a couple of times in the head. Throughout the beatings, Piper laughed and said things like “Ohh ․ like that would suck” and “Ah, that’s got to hurt.”

[¶ 7.] At one point, Poage asked to be let into his vehicle to warm himself. The record indicates that Poage said he preferred to bleed to death in the warmth rather than freeze to death in the cold. Piper agreed to grant his request, so long as he washed the blood off of his body in the creek. After rinsing in the icy waters, Piper refused to let him warm himself in the vehicle. Instead, they continued beating and taunting Poage.

[¶ 8.] Next, Poage was dragged back into the creek, where Briley Piper and the others attempted to drown the victim. The co-defendants’ stories diverge somewhat on the final fate of Poage. One witness stated that Piper admitted standing on Poage’s neck to help Hoadley drown him, then Piper stabbed him twice or more-once by the ear and then under the chin. Piper’s brief contends he did not participate in the drowning attempts or stabbings, but instead that he went back to Poage’s vehicle. After the drowning attempts, stabbings, beatings and stoning, Poage was still moving. According to Piper, Hoadley threw the final rock that killed Poage, but at that point Piper was not there to personally witness this act. Both Page and Hoadley admitted they jointly dropped large rocks on Poage’s head, actions which they believed finally killed him. Approximately four hours after the three kidnapped Poage, and about three hours after the beatings began at the gulch, Poage was left for dead in the creek.

[¶ 9.] Piper drove the three away from the secluded area in Poage’s vehicle, and they proceeded to discuss how they would divide Poage’s property. They went to Poage’s house and stole numerous items. The group then drove to Hannibal, Missouri, together. There, they visited Piper’s sister, but upon her refusal to let them stay, they headed back to South Dakota. The group returned to Rapid City, South Dakota, using Poage’s ATM card for cash and pawning some of Poage’s property throughout the trip.³ Eventually, the three went their own ways. Piper ultimately ended up in his home state of Alaska.⁴

[¶ 10.] On April 22, 2000, over a month after the three left Poage for dead, a woman who owned land near Higgins Gulch spotted what was later determined to be Poage’s remains in the creek. His body was found, clad in a sleeveless t-shirt, socks and shoes. Donald Habbe (Habbe), a forensic pathologist from the Clinical Laboratory in Rapid City, performed an autopsy on the body. Habbe discovered numerous head injuries and stab wounds. Some examples of the head injuries inflicted included: stab wound to the jugular vein, another stab wound through the skull, and a complex, spider-web shaped skull fracture that measured five inches. Habbe determined the cause of death was the “stab wounds and the blunt force injury to the head.”

[¶ 11.] After the body was discovered, Piper became a suspect. Law enforcement from South Dakota tracked him down in Alaska, questioned him and arrested him for first degree murder. While still in Alaska, he gave a detailed statement describing Poage’s murder and his participation in it to South Dakota law enforcement. He was subsequently extradited to South Dakota. Piper was then jailed in Lawrence County, South Dakota. He later pleaded guilty to, and was convicted of, first degree felony murder; kidnapping; robbery in the first degree; burglary in the first degree; and grand theft. A sentencing hearing began on January 17, 2001, and lasted for three days. At the hearing, the State argued for the death sentence, and Piper argued against imposing such a sentence. After argument, the circuit court ruled that the death penalty would be imposed for the first degree murder conviction. Thereafter, co-defendant Page also pleaded guilty to the same charges, and after an extensive sentencing hearing, he was also sentenced to death by the same judge. Hoadley then stood trial in front of a jury on the same charges.⁵ He was found guilty of the same charges but the jury sentenced him to life in prison. See State v. Hoadley, 2002 SD 109, 651 N.W.2d 249. Thereafter, Piper appealed to this Court.

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/sd-supreme-court/1107292.html