2016 Amendment S, California tech billionaire Henry T. Nicholas‘s costly vanity project to enshrine his poor dead sister Marsy’s name into every state’s constitution, got some affirmation from the South Dakota Supreme Court yesterday. The high court ruled that the crime victims’ rights known as “Marsy’s Law” allow police to request the exclusion of their names from public court records in cases where the police can claim to be victims of crimes. The case in question involves two Sioux Falls police officers who chased a suspect who responded by shooting at them, injuring one and at least alarming the other. The Supreme Court says the targeted police were victims under the plain and unexceptional language of Henry T. Nicholas’s Article 6 Section 29:
Supreme Court Justice Robert Gusinsky wrote the opinion, which was supported in whole by the court’s four other justices. The high court unanimously found that Circuit Judge Susan Sabers erred in her handling of the police officers’ requests to have their names withheld from public court filings.
The high court said Judge Sabers should have conducted a balancing test and ordered that the matter be returned to circuit court, with the direction that the judge conduct a balancing test to decide whether the officers’ names should be withheld from the public files.
In writing the decision, Justice Gusinsky found that subsection five of the Marsy’s Law provisions in the South Dakota Constitution was the most relevant subsection in the officers’ appeal.
The subsection provides for “The right, upon request, to prevent the disclosure to the public, or the defendant or anyone acting on behalf of the defendant in the criminal case, of information or records that could be used to locate or harass the victim or the victim’s family, or which could disclose confidential or privileged information about the victim[.]”
Justice Gusinsky wrote, “Nothing in the plain language of Marsy’s Law excludes a class, such as law enforcement officers, from the definition of ‘victim.’”
He added, “As it was drafted and passed, the plain language of Marsy’s Law protects ‘a person,’ and law enforcement officers undoubtably fit that definition. Officers One and Two, having been persons against whom a crime has allegedly been committed, qualify as victims under Marsy’s Law and are entitled to request its protections” [Bob Mercer, “Justices Say Police Can Be Shielded by Marsy’s Law,” KELO-TV, 2026.04.23].
This ruling guarantees that, thanks to Henry T. Nicholas’s scrawling over South Dakota law, Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons who come to South Dakota and start shooting protestors the way they did in Minneapolis this winter when they murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti can remain anonymous. All murderous agents need to do is claim their target threatened them (drove a car, recorded video…) and thus invoke “victim” status to prevent the public from knowing their names and holding them accountable.
They let our current Gestapo wear masks. The Watchmen had quite an effect.
Goes to show you the mess that amendments and measures, initiated, can be foisted upon the ignorant masses to the detriment of the Great State of South Dakota. The Great State of South Dakota needs to ban measures, initiated, entirely. Run the law bills through the legislatures so they can be vetted.
We all know cops’ lives suck because they reliably abuse the rule of law, their families, alcohol, drugs, food, power, detainees and occasionally murder their wives; nevertheless, police unions are showered with cash while teachers’ unions get the shaft.
Grudzie needs to learn how to lobby his “ignorant masses”.
He can’t do it and we “ignorant masses” ARE the unrealized power in SD!
Grutz, in theory, the representatives are supposed to represent us. Because they don’t and never have, the smart people in S.D. came up with the initiative. The people rule and those humble public servants should listen to what we want, not outside interests or robber barons. If they don’t, we have an alternative, a choice, a say in our lives and future.
I’m really starting to resent the idea that government is for the few, and I literally hate what is becoming of our state and federal government. Sad year to celebrate the Declaration of Independence’s 250th year, especially as a woman or minority.
I typed in Snderson from my phone. Sorry Grudz has always been a Torie.