Anchorage Daily News

PIERRE, S.D. -- The South Dakota Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the death sentence of a 29-year-old Anchorage man who pleaded guilty in the March 2000 torture and murder of an acquaintance.

The court unanimously ruled that Briley Piper did not validly relinquish his right to have a jury, rather than a judge, decide whether he got the death penalty or life in prison without parole for the murder of 19-year-old Chester Allan Poage of Spearfish.

The ruling left Piper's first-degree murder conviction intact and sends the case back to Circuit Court.

One of Piper's attorneys, Steven Binger of Sioux Falls, said his client will ask for a jury to decide if he should get death or life in prison.

"It's a good development that he will now have judgment passed by 12 people on a jury," Binger said.

The prosecutor in the case, Lawrence County State's Attorney John J. Fitzgerald, said he will continue to seek the death penalty when a jury determines Piper's sentence. "The facts haven't changed, just the passage of time."

Piper and Elijah Page of Athens, Texas, pleaded guilty to murdering Poage and were sentenced to death. Page ended his appeals and was executed two years ago.

A third man, Darrel Hoadley of Lead, pleaded not guilty and was convicted by a jury, which sentenced him to life in prison.

Prosecutors said the three abducted Poage as part of a scheme to burgle his mother's home when she was on vacation and killed him so there would be no witnesses to their theft of a Chevrolet Blazer, stereo, television, coin collection, video game and other items.

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