South Dakota’s Supreme Court has a new chief justice.
The justices selected Steven Jensen to lead the five-member court.
Jensen takes the helm from Justice David Gilbertson, who led the court for the last 19 years.
Jensen says he will continue with some of the priorities Gilbertson pushed for.
That includes a specialty court system, which focuses on drug and alcohol cases, or those that deal with veterans.
“Just in the last few years we’ve developed two mental health courts,” Jensen says. “Each of those have very specific work and are instrumental in keeping people in the community that—used to be the only option for them would be the penitentiary.”
Justice Jensen is a resident of Union County and was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2017.
He will take over as Chief Justice when Justice Gilbertson retires in January of 2021.