Thursday,  October 4, 2012 • Vol. 13--No. 79 • 23 of 35 •  Other Editions

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Hearing on SD's execution protocol to proceed

• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- A federal hearing on the constitutionality of South Dakota's one-drug capital punishment procedure will go on as planned Thursday, and convicted killer Donald Moeller will be there.
• Judge Lawrence Piersol, faced with an apparent attorney tug-of-war in the case, ruled Wednesday that Moeller must be present to determine whether he agrees with attorney Mark Marshall's filing to dismiss the case.
• Attorneys with the federal public defender's office in Little Rock, Ark., have been representing Moeller in the federal case. They contend that the execution method that will likely use pentobarbital violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
• The 60-year-old Moeller is to be executed in late October or early November in the 1990 killing of 9-year-old Becky O'Connell.
• Piersol canceled a scheduled viewing of the execution chambers Thursday.

3rd person dies from West Nile in South Dakota

• PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- The South Dakota Department of Health says another person has died from West Nile disease in South Dakota.
• This bring brings the total number of deaths from the mosquito-borne disease in the state to three. The first death from the disease was reported in Hughes County, while the second death was reported in McPherson County.
• The South Dakota Department of Health says 195 cases of West Nile have been reported so far this year.

SD woman appealing manslaughter conviction

• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- The attorney for a Sioux Falls woman convicted of manslaughter in a drunken crash says an officer's testimony prejudiced the jury against her client.
• Prosecutors maintain that the officer's comparison of the force of the crash to more than 900 handguns being fired at once was a proper analogy.
• Thirty-year-old Tammy Kvasnicka (kay-VAYS'-nik-uh) is serving 60 years in prison for the July 2010 crash in which authorities say she drove the wrong way on Interstate 229 in Sioux Falls while drunk and hit an oncoming car, killing one person

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