Court Opinion

ID: 9668184
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:05:00.502796+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:43.441143
License: Public Domain

HENDERSON, Justice
(concurring in result).
State’s brief contains 61 federal citations throughout the United States and five references to the United States Code. Furthermore, there are two references to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and three references to the Sentencing Guidelines. (Said sentencing guidelines never having-been adopted by the State of South Dakota.) In a supplemental brief submitted by the State of South Dakota, an additional United States Supreme Court case is cited, namely Parke v. Raley, 506 U.S. -, 113 S.Ct. 517, 121 L.Ed.2d 391 (1992). In addition, State cited to 42 South Dakota Supreme Court decisions.
In digesting the Appellant’s brief, I note that it refers to six federal decisions and 17 decisions of the Supreme Court of South Dakota. Appellant’s Reply Brief contains two new authorities by way of decisions in this Court.
There are approximately 50 cases cited in the majority opinion, many of which are federal decisions, all impacting and, perhaps, in one way or the other, modifying the decisional law of this state. It appears to me that South Dakota Supreme Court decisions are swept aside in deference to federal decisions. I cannot, and will not, fully vote for this majority opinion which aids in unsettling the law of this state. It appears to me that the line of relevant South Dakota decisions have been cast aside by the heavy hand of quoted federal authorities. Therefore, the unforeseeable damage, caused by this type of writing, is unknown. Only the future will unfold the implications of the majority writing. We simply cannot examine the length nor the breadth of this impactual writing today. With the heavy citations of federal law, it is difficult, as an appellate writer, to make a valued judgment in interpreting the principles of law or stare decisis or legal precept selected by the writer. It strikes me (in any given jurisdiction) that a metamorphosis of the law is shaped, down through the years, by a mold of scholasticism. Thereby, the law takes on a degree of permanent shape in its evolution.
Having been a part of the growth of deci-sional law in this state for a period of a decade and one-half, I am not willing to surrender the writings of the gentlemen I have served on this Court with, such as former Chief Justices Roger Wollman, Francis Dunn, Jon Fosheim, and Robert Miller, not to mention Justices Morgan, Sabers, Amundson and Acting Justice E.W. Hertz. This likewise applies to former Chief Justice George Wuest, who joined the majority opinion.
Need I mention that the appellate review process is a troubled quest for rational outcome? Through countless hours of academic research, and thousands of decisions in this Court, we arrive at settled South Dakota law.
*815Here, the merit of the case — to affirm— escapes me not — but the magnitude of this writing, with competing federal and South Dakota authorities hobbles me — for I cannot walk safely in the durability of the law.
Therefore, I can only concur in the result and do not subscribe to the technique in arriving at an affirmance. '