The only inmate on South Dakota’s death row saw his appeal denied by the state Supreme Court, which rejected his claim that he had gotten poor legal advice to plead guilty to murder.
Briley Piper, 39, was sentenced to death as one of three young men who killed a teenage acquaintance in 2000.
One of his co-defendants, Elijah Page, also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death; he was executed in 2007. The other, Darrell Hoadley, was convicted by a jury and received a life sentence.
Piper became the state’s only condemned prisoner with the execution last month of Charles Rhines, who had killed a man in 1992 while robbing a Rapid City doughnut shop where he used to work.
Piper’s current attorneys argued that his conviction should be reversed he “did not understand the consequences” of the plea he entered at age 20. His lawyers at the time reportedly told him he would be less likely to get a death sentence if he admitted his guilt.
In an opinion made public Thursday, the state justices unanimously denied the request.
Piper had already been granted a second sentencing hearing, in 2011. That jury also decided he should die.
The death of 19-year-old Chester Poage early on the morning of March 13, 2000, followed hours of torture by Piper, Page and Hoadley, according to trial testimony. The three defendants had been at Poage’s house in Spearfish playing video games, Page testified, when they came up with a plan to “take his stuff” — his Chevy Blazer, two stereos, a Playstation, a video camera.
Page claimed Piper had been the aggressor in assaulting Poage and, hours later, had made the decision that Poage needed to die.
The three had driven Poage to a remote wooded area called Higgins Gulch and had ordered him to strip off his clothes. As they tried to bury him in the snow, he attempted to escape. They denied his plea that he be allowed to warm up in his car — he reportedly said he would rather bleed to death there than freeze to death — and they beat and kicked him and attempted to drown him in a creek. They stabbed him in the neck with small keychain knives and finally threw rocks at his head, then left him dead in the creek around 3 in the morning.
Poage’s body was found six weeks after his death. Hoadley was arrested first, after a police informant recorded him making statements about the attack, and he implicated the other two.
Page’s execution in 2007 was South Dakota’s first in 60 years. Since then, it has executed four men.
