If a defendant has been convicted of three or more felonies in addition to the principal felony and one or more of the prior felony convictions was for a crime of violence as defined in subdivision 22-1-2(9), the sentence for the principal felony shall be enhanced to the sentence for a Class C felony.
S.D. Codified Laws § 22-7-8
Three or more additional felony convictions including one or more crimes of violence--Enhancement of sentence
Applied in 44 court decisions — leading case State v. Goodroad (1997)
Most recently applied in State v. Martin (March 2025)
Source: SDC 1939, § 13.0611; SDCL, § 22-7-1; SL 1976, ch 158, § 7-3; SL 1977, ch 189, § 19; SL 1981, ch 13, § 4; SL 1984, ch 166, § 1; SL 2005, ch 120, § 384.
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.