Murder in the first degree is a Class A felony. Murder in the second degree is a Class B felony.
S.D. Codified Laws § 22-16-12
Classification of murder
Applied in 13 court decisions — leading case State v. Higgins (1979)
Most recently applied in State v. Thoman (February 2021)
Source: SDC 1939, § 13.2012; SL 1939, ch 30; SL 1955, ch 28; SL 1976, ch 158, § 16-2; SL 1978, ch 349, § 9; SL 1980, ch 173, § 12.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: South Dakota Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain South Dakota statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.