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is not just a South Dakota story - it's an American story.
• Koehler has made a fine film and it's great to see it so well supported by the local community.
• What is even more promising for the future, though, is the prospect of more of this same quality of work. Koehler said Saturday he would like to make more documentaries about South Dakota history that are relevant to a larger audience. He even tipped his hand about one project he has in mind -- a possible film about rodeo great Casey Tibbs, a Fort Pierre native. From the applause and the questions from the audience about how to support his work, it's clear that area people are already on board.
• They should be. As Tom Black, one of the coordinators of the South Dakota Film Festival, suggested at Saturday's screening, such films are more than artistic works -- they're economic development. People who have the chance to see South Dakota's best stories told in this format will also want to see South Dakota for themselves as they delve more deeply into why our part of the Great Plains matters to the rest of the country.
• Let's support the artists who want to tell more of our best stories in this way.
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• PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley says the South Dakota Supreme Court has denied a request to rehear arguments in the case of a man who helped kill a guard at the State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls.
• The ruling clears the way for the 2nd Judicial Circuit to schedule a resentencing hearing for Rodney Berget, whose death sentence was overturned by the state Supreme Court last month. The justices had ruled that the circuit judge improperly considered a statement Berget made to a psychiatrist.
• The high court weighed 12 issues raised by Berget's lawyer and ruled in the state's favor in 11 of them.
• Berget and another inmate, Eric Robert, pleaded guilty to killing guard Ronald Johnson during a failed escape attempt in April 2011. Robert was executed last October.
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