SD Supreme Court Summaries
The SD Supreme Court handed down one decision this morning, holding inter alia:
- Assault conviction affirmed, with Court establishing foundational evidentiary requirements for video from automatic surveillance system
Summary follows:
STATE v. REEVES, 2021 S.D. 64: Defendant “was convicted and sentenced for assault by a jail inmate – contact with bodily fluids, simple assault against an inmate, and threatening a law enforcement officer,” for behavior exhibited at the Minnehaha County Jail. Over Defendant’s objection as to a lack of proper evidentiary foundation, the trial court admitted into evidence video collected from video surveillance system utilized in the jail, a system which runs continuously. The SD Supreme Court affirmed and, in so doing, addressed an issue not previously decided by the Court, to wit:
… the foundational requirements for admitting video footage under SDCL 19-19-901(a) when a human operator is not available to testify to the accuracy of the scene depicted in the video.
This decision reviews approaches utilized by other jurisdictions and ultimately adopts a “flexible fact-based rule” described as follows:
[¶19.] The flexible, fact-based rule we adopt today permits the party offering the evidence, and the party against whom it is offered, a fair opportunity to address with the circuit court whether sufficient foundational evidence has been presented to authenticate a particular photograph or video. If a circuit court determines that there is adequate foundation for the admissibility of the video, any further “concerns that the defendant ha[s] regarding the surveillance procedures, and the method of storing and reproducing the video material, [are] properly the subject of cross-examination and affect[ ] the weight, not the admissibility, of the video.” Stangle, 97 A.3d at 639 (quotation marks omitted) (citation omitted).
The Court’s decision is unanimous (5-0), with opinion authored by Justice Kern.
This decision may be accessed at