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ruling that improper evidence was used at trial. He was again convicted and sentenced to die in 1997. The state Supreme Court affirmed the sentence, and Moeller lost appeals at the state and federal levels.
• Though he fought his conviction and sentence for years, Moeller in July he said he was ready to accept death as the consequence of his actions. He admitted for the first time in court that he killed the girl.
• But even as Moeller insisted he was ready to die, several motions were filed on his behalf to stop the execution despite his protests.
• Earlier this month, a federal judge dismissed a pending suit challenging South Dakota's execution protocol after Moeller insisted he wanted no part of it. Moeller also distanced himself from a motion filed by a woman with loose family ties who argued that his decades in solitary confinement had made him incapable of voluntarily accepting his fate. That motion was dismissed Monday.
• Moeller's execution came just two weeks after the Oct. 15 execution of Eric Robert for killing South Dakota prison guard Ronald "R.J." Johnson during a failed escape attempt.
• Before that, the last execution in South Dakota was in 2007, when Elijah Page died by lethal injection for the murder of Chester Allan Poage, who was abducted and killed in a scheme to burglarize his mother's home.
• In 1947, George Sitts was electrocuted for killing two law enforcement officers. And in 1913, Joseph Rickman was hanged for the murder of a woman and her daughter.
• They were among 17 inmates executed since 1877, the oldest of which came during the days of the Dakota Territory.
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