The South Dakota Supreme Court has upheld the conviction of an inmate serving life for kidnapping and rape. Harry David Evans raised several issues on appeal. One is whether state law officers had jurisdiction to remove his pickup truck from where it was parked on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Harry Evans had an on-again, off-again relationship with the victim, who lived near Hermosa, until she took out an order of protection to keep him away.
On the morning of September 6, 2017, the victim awoke to find Evans in bed beside her. He stuffed sleeping pills into her mouth and then duct-taped her mouth, hands, legs, and feet. She passed out while Evans was dragging her out of her house. Evans later raped her.
The next day law officers found Evans’s pickup parked in the lot at the Prairie Winds Casino on the Pine Ridge Reservation. They arrested Evans, a non-Indian, at the motel and then had the pickup towed to Hermosa. There they obtained a search warrant before going through the truck, where among other stuff they found notebooks with Evans’s journal entries about the victim.
Evans claims his trial judge erred by not suppressing evidence found in his pickup truck. He says state law officers did not have jurisdiction to take his property from reservation land.
At oral arguments in October 2020, Justice Patricia Devaney asks appeals attorney John Murphy if he can cite precedent pertaining to this case.
DEVANEY: “Are you aware of any case that has squarely held that the property of a non-Indian that there is a tribal sovereignty interest with respect to a scenario, a non-Indian property in a non-Indian defendant in a state-law crime?”
MURPHY: “No, your honor, and I think this may be the aspect of this case that’s one of first impression.”
Justice Devaney, who wrote this opinion, suggests that perhaps there are no concerns to raise in this particular fact scenario.
In the opinion, she notes that DCI agents notified the Oglala Sioux tribal police as well as the Oglala Lakota County sheriff. Both of those agencies sent officers to assist.
The unanimous opinion concludes that even if there was a tribal interest in this case because some of it occurred on reservation land, the state officers respected that interest by notifying tribal police and asking them for assistance.
Related Story: Inmate Appeals Prior Bad Acts Evidence (OCT 6, 2020)
An inmate serving a life sentence for kidnapping and rape is asking the South Dakota Supreme Court for a new trial.
Harry David Evans says several aspects of his 2019 trial were unfair. One issue he raises is that the Seventh Circuit trial judge allowed evidence of Evans's misconduct from about 25 years earlier.
The South Dakota Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday, Oct. 6.