Judge denies petition to appeal death penalty for only inmate on South Dakota's death row

AI-assisted summary
• Briley Wayne Piper was sentenced to death for the 2000 murder of Chester Allan Poage in South Dakota.
• Piper has repeatedly appealed his death sentence, but his latest appeal was denied by a federal judge.
• Piper has until June 9 to appeal the latest ruling.

A federal court judge has denied an Alaska man’s petition to appeal his death sentence and he will remain as the only inmate on death row in South Dakota.

Briley Wayne Piper was sentenced to death for the March 2000 murder of 19-year-old Chester Allan Poage near Spearfish, according to a Lawrence County court document.

Darrel Hoadley, a co-defendant in the case, received a sentence of life in prison, according to reporting from South Dakota Searchlight. A second co-defendant, Elijah Page, was executed by lethal injection on July 11, 2007.

For 25 years, Piper has fought his death sentence. Here is a timeline of the court process so far.

March 12, 2000

The three men, ranging in age from 18 to 20 at the time, kidnapped, murdered and tortured Poage over a span of nearly four hours, according to a United States District Court document.

The trio devised a plan in which they’d rob Poage while playing video games at his house on March 12, 2000, according to the court document. Once inside, Page pulled out a pistol and ordered Poage to the floor.

Poage was kicked unconscious before he was bound to a chair, according to the court document. One of the men stood on a tire iron across Poage’s ankles while the other two forced the man to drink a mixture of beer and hydrochloric acid.

The three men then took Poage to Higgins Gulch, near Spearfish, and beat, stabbed and stoned Poage before stripping him of most of his clothing and pushing him into a stream, according to previous Argus Leader reporting. Then, the men dropped rocks, weighing upwards of 53 pounds, on Poage’s head.

An autopsy revealed Poage’s skull was “severely cracked, his ears were nearly torn off, his jugular vein was nearly severed and he had been stabbed in the brain,” according to previous Argus Leader reporting.

Then the men “looted Poage’s home,” after which they pawned “some of Poage’s possessions and used his ATM card to steal cash from his bank account,” according to the court document.

2001 – 2025

Hoadley was sentenced to life in prison for the crime, according to South Dakota Searchlight. Page was sentenced to death by lethal injection, which was carried out on July 11, 2007, according to previous Argus Leader reporting.

At the time, Page’s execution was the first to be carried out in South Dakota in 60 years. Since then, the state has executed four other convicted murderers: Eric Robert, Donald Eugene Moeller, Rodney Berget and Charles Rhines.

Piper was initially sentenced to death by lethal injection on Jan. 19, 2001, according to previous Argus Leader reporting. The Supreme Court of South Dakota confirmed his death sentence in 2006, according to court documents.

Piper’s attorneys filed a habeas corpus petition, which eventually was granted in 2009, as the court found the state trial judge “had not made clear that Piper would receive a life sentence if even one juror voted against the death penalty,” according to the court document.

The man was retried in 2011, in which the jury again sentenced Piper to death, according to the court document. The man appealed to the Supreme Court of South Dakota, arguing his sentence was disproportionate as Hoadley had only received a life sentence. But the court upheld the judgment in 2014.

Piper again filed a habeas corpus case in 2014, which was denied by a judge in 2019, according to the document. A federal habeas corpus case was filed in 2020, which was denied Friday.

In that case, Piper claimed ineffective counsel, a constitutional challenge to the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and challenged actions jurors and other key players took in the case, according to the court document.

In the final decision, a judge “denied Piper’s claims that his counsel had not been effective in representing him and denied Piper’s demand to overturn his sentence,” according to a news release from the Office of the South Dakota Attorney General.

The man has until June 9 to appeal the ruling to the United States Court of Appeals, according to the news release. No execution date has been set.