A long-serving South Dakota death row inmate wants a federal judge to dismiss his case. The case is convicted child killer Donald Moeller’s last chance at appealing his death sentence. A federal judge in Sioux Falls was scheduled to hear the case Thursday, October 4.
Tuesday Attorney Mark Marshall filed paperwork called a stipulation for dismissal on Donald Moeller’s behalf. It requests a judge dismiss the case Moeller lodged questioning whether South Dakota’s one-drug lethal injection method is cruel and unusual punishment.
If the federal judge dismisses the case, Moeller is out of appeals and faces death by lethal injection sometime during the week of October 28th.
Two decades ago, Moeller was convicted of raping and killing 9-year-old Becky O’Connell of Sioux Falls and sentenced to death. He appealed and was retried; in 1997, a second jury found Moeller guilty and again sentenced him to death.
At a court hearing in August of this year, Moeller’s attorney said the convicted killer “accepts the execution as the consequences of his actions.”