Except as provided in § 23A-27-13.3, upon receiving a verdict or plea of guilty for a felony not punishable by death or life imprisonment by a person never before convicted of a crime that at the time of conviction constitutes a felony in this state, a court having jurisdiction of the defendant, if satisfied that the ends of justice and the best interest of the public as well as the defendant will be served thereby, may, without entering a judgment of guilt, and with the consent of the defendant, suspend the imposition of sentence and place the defendant on probation for a period and upon any terms and conditions as the court may deem best. No person who has previously been granted, whether in this state or any other, a suspended imposition of sentence for a felony, is eligible to be granted a second suspended imposition of sentence for a felony. A court may revoke the suspension at any time during the probationary period and impose and execute sentence without diminishment or credit for any of the probationary period.
S.D. Codified Laws § 23A-27-13
Suspended imposition of felony sentence--Eligibility--Probation placement--Revocation
Applied in 38 court decisions — leading case State v. Janklow (2005)
Most recently applied in Record Expungement of Jones (September 2025)
Source: SL 1953, ch 202; SL 1957, ch 181; SDC Supp 1960, § 34.3708-2; SL 1961, ch 186; SDCL § 23-57-4; SL 1972, ch 149; SL 1976, ch 158, § 43-3; SL 1977, ch 197; SL 1978, ch 178…
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.