PIERRE, S.D. (AP) - South Dakota Supreme Court Chief Justice David Gilbertson delivered his final State of the Judiciary address in Pierre on Wednesday, using the speech to push for a justice system that helps people address drug addiction and stay out of prison.
The longest-serving chief justice in state history called drug addiction an “evil” that leads to crimes and requested funding from law enforcement for addiction treatment connected to drug and DUI courts. He will leave the office in January next year due to term-limits.
In preparing for his final address, he looked back to his first as Chief Justice in 2002. “There’s not one thing in that message that I talked about then that’s going to be talked about today,” Gilbertson told the Associated Press.
The difference is addiction, Gilbertson said.
Gilbertson said the number of adults arrested for drug crimes more than doubled from 2008 to 2018, including an “explosion” of female offenders. He said three-fourths of the women in prison at the end of 2018 were convicted of drug-related offenses.
The Legislature will be considering criminal justice reform this session, and Gov. Kristi Noem has requested increased funding for addiction treatment.
Gilbertson used his speech to point to the cost savings of probation over incarceration, saying incarceration is 10 times more expensive. The number of people imprisoned has increased significantly in recent years, and the judge requested funding for seven more court services officers for the probation program.
Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg has argued against the effectiveness of presumptive probation, in which judges are required to grant probation in response to certain nonviolent, lower-level felonies - including drug possession and use - unless there’s a “significant risk” to the public.
This session, Ravnsborg is pushing legislation that would disqualify people from presumptive probation if they don’t cooperate with law enforcement investigations or if they have more than two offenses in a ten-year period.
Gilbertson has served four terms presiding over the state’s highest court and delivered the annual address for 19 years.
He was first appointed as a circuit court judge in 1986 by former Gov. Bill Janklow, presiding over his home community of Sisseton.
Gilbertson joked in his speech that he was the “scum that rose to the top,” referencing an insult he once received from a controversial campaign against the judicial system.
Besides championing addiction treatment and other alternatives to incarceration, Gilbertson also ushered in live-streamed oral arguments for the Supreme Court and digital access to justices’ opinions. He also oversaw the enactment of a requirement for South Dakota attorneys to be tested on Indian law on the state’s bar exam.
For many years, Gilbertson remained a registered Democrat, an outlier in a Capitol usually dominated by Republicans. He said he switched his party affiliation to independent last year after observing a widening political divide at the federal level. He didn’t want to be identified with either political party.
The justices on the state’s Supreme Court will vote to select a new chief justice in the coming year.
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