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| Youngest death-row inmates seek life |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 12/08/2003 |
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The two youngest men on South Dakota's death row argue that it's not fair that they should face execution when a third man convicted of the same killing got a life sentence. Briley Piper, 23, and Elijah Page, 22, also seek to have their sentences converted to life in prison because a judge, not a jury, decided they should get the death penalty for the torture slaying of Chester Allan Poage on March 13, 2000. Their appeals will give the state Supreme Court a chance to determine how recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings apply to South Dakota's death penalty laws. The nation's highest court last year ruled that Arizona's death-penalty law was unconstitutional because only judges, not juries, were allowed to determine whether convicts got death sentences. In early 2001, Piper and Page pleaded guilty to murder, kidnapping, robbery, burglary and grand theft. Circuit Judge Warren Johnson offered both a chance to have a jury decide whether they should die by lethal injection or get life in prison without parole. Piper, of Anchorage, Alaska, and Page, of Athens, Texas, gave up their right to a jury trial and allowed Johnson to decide their fates after sentencing hearings. The circuit judge sentenced Piper and Page to death. The third man charged in the killing, Darrell Hoadley of Lead, went to trial on the charges. A jury convicted him of murder and the other offenses but decided in a split vote that he should get life in prison. Piper and Page are the first murder convicts in South Dakota to be sentenced to death after pleading guilty. Their cases also mark the first time in South Dakota that people convicted of the same killing have received different sentences. Their appeals were well under way last year when the state Supreme Court sent their cases back to Johnson so he could decide whether their sentences are unfair compared with the life sentence given Hoadley. Johnson upheld his decisions, so their appeals to the Supreme Court started anew. |
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