• PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- The South Dakota Supreme Court ruled Thursday that plea bargains that defer prosecution for crimes cannot force defendants to plead guilty later if they violate the terms of probation for other offenses.
• The high court's unanimous ruling overturns a South Dakota man's conviction of grand theft for allegedly stealing a car in August 2010.
• The justices said the terms of a plea bargain that required Travis Long Fox, now 21, to plead guilty to grand theft after he violated probation for other crimes took away his constitutional right to enter the plea of his choice.
• Long Fox, of Onida, was accused of stealing a car, driving into rural fences, getting stuck and leaving the scene of the accident. He was charged with grand theft and other offenses. In a plea bargain, he agreed to plead guilty to reckless driving, ingestion of a drug and failure to report an accident. In return for his guilty pleas, prosecutors agreed to defer prosecution of the grand theft charge and dismiss it if he complied with the terms of his probation for two years.
• After Long Fox was found to have violated his probation by testing positive for marijuana use, prosecutors refiled the grand theft charge. A judge denied Long Fox's request for a jury trial on the grand theft charge, ruling that Long Fox was bound by the earlier plea bargain to plead guilty to that charge. Long Fox then reluctantly pleaded guilty to grand theft and was sentenced in February 2012 to five years, with all but 60 days suspended, according to court records.
• Al Arendt, a lawyer from Pierre who began representing Long Fox after the probation violation, said plea bargains requiring people to plead guilty later if they violated probation have been commonly used, but he argued they were unconstitutional. He said Thursday he's happy the Supreme Court agreed with him.

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