No person may be convicted of murder or manslaughter, or of aiding suicide, unless the death of the person alleged to have been killed, and the fact of the killing by the accused are each established as independent facts beyond a reasonable doubt.
S.D. Codified Laws § 22-16-2
Corpus delicti--Proof beyond reasonable doubt
Applied in 8 court decisions — leading case State v. Hoadley (2002)
Most recently applied in State v. Plastow (December 2015)
Source: SDC 1939, § 13.2006; SL 2005, ch 120, § 152.
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.