South Dakota Criminal Records

South Dakota charges for the court search and gives the state check only by fingerprint. The Unified Judicial System's Public Access Record Search costs $20 a search "regardless of whether the search returns any records," while the Attorney General's Division of Criminal Investigation takes fingerprints and a signed release for the state criminal history and does not run a name check for the public. The state's expungement statute defines the remedy as sealing and reaches arrests rather than convictions, and its judgments run twenty years with a ten-year lien. This page gives the South Dakota rule and the South Dakota search for each record, with government sources only.

The Attorney General's background check page sets the terms: "The fees for background checks are $50.00 for Request for Agency/State and FBI, $30.00 for Personal/State ONLY. DCI does not offer refunds. Print off receipt and take to Livescan machine location. You will not be fingerprinted unless this receipt is presented." By mail, the Division's instructions require "fingerprints, signed authorization and release and the required fee," and "total payment of $50.00 check or money order must be submitted with each request to cover the costs of both the state and federal background check." The Unified Judicial System's own instructions for the checks it requires break the state fee down and note that the FBI charges its own. There is no name-based search for the public; the state record reaches an employer or an agency through the person's prints and signature. So a South Dakota state record produced by name for a stranger did not come from the Division; it came from a copy of the court's index, and the criminal records page explains what such a copy misses and why a name match is not a person.

South Dakota tries felonies and misdemeanors in one trial court, the circuit court, in seven circuits covering the 66 counties, with magistrate judges handling the lesser cases inside the same system, and the clerk of courts in each county keeping the file. The Unified Judicial System's court records search page prices the statewide search: "There is $20 fee for each search submitted via PARS. The fee is charged when the search is submitted and applies regardless of whether the search returns any records. You can search as a guest and pay as you go for each search," or open an account for volume, and the guest search repeats that "there will be a $20.00 fee for any search submitted." The free routes are narrower: the system's records page describes eCourts, which "provides summary of information for public cases by searching with the party name or case number" for registered users, with registration "free and confidential," and a Civil Judgment Query, "a tool that provides public access to UJS' civil judgments database." The clerk of courts certifies the file, and the county pages on this site link each courthouse. A background check company's "South Dakota court record" is a PARS or eCourts pull on the date it was made, and the criminal records page explains what a copy misses.

South Dakota's expungement statutes, 23A-3-26 to 23A-3-33, define the remedy: "'Expungement,' the sealing of all records on file within any court, detention or correctional facility, law enforcement agency, criminal justice agency, or Department of Public Safety concerning a person's detection, apprehension, arrest, detention, trial or disposition of an offense within the criminal justice system." Under 23A-3-27 an arrested person may petition the circuit court for expungement a year after the arrest if no charge was filed, a year after a dismissal, on acquittal, or sooner "upon a showing of compelling necessity," and the legislature's 2012 act, "An Act to allow an arrest to be expunged when the criminal case is dismissed," is what opened the dismissal route. A conviction is not expunged in South Dakota; the closest thing is the suspended imposition of sentence under 23A-27-17, where a defendant who completes probation has the case dismissed and the record sealed from the public, and the statutes exclude driving offenses from that relief. A sealed South Dakota record is closed at the court, the jail, the arresting agency and the Department of Public Safety, and a copy sold before the order is reached through the federal rule on complete and up to date public records, on the criminal records page.

South Dakota's open records law, 1-27-1, provides that "all records and documents of or belonging to this state, any county, municipality, political subdivision, or tax-supported district in this state, or any agency, branch, department, board, bureau, commission, council, subunit, or committee of any of the foregoing, shall be open to inspection by any person during normal business hours," and 1-27-1.5 lists the records that are not, including the records of law enforcement agencies that form part of an investigation, intelligence information, informant identification and citizen complaints, with an exception the section carves back out for the alcohol or drug content of a person's body fluids and for 911 recordings. The fact of an arrest, the charge and the jail roster are not investigation records, and the sheriffs post them: the Minnehaha County Sheriff's jail inmate information for Sioux Falls lists who is held, and the Department of Corrections' offender locator covers state prisoners and parolees. The arrest records page covers what happens to a booking after it leaves the roster.

A South Dakota judgment docketed with the clerk of the circuit court is a lien on the debtor's real property in that county under 15-16-7, "on all the real property, except the homestead, in the county where the same is so docketed," for "ten years from the time of docketing the same in the county where it was rendered, and no judgment shall become a lien on real property as herein provided unless it be docketed in the county where the land is situated." The judgment itself may be enforced for twenty years under 15-2-6, and a creditor who wants the lien back after ten years renews the judgment before the twenty run. The court records page covers where the judgment dockets and the Civil Judgment Query are searched.

South Dakota is a single federal judicial district in four divisions under 28 U.S.C. 122. The Northern Division covers the counties of Brown, Campbell, Clark, Codington, Corson, Day, Deuel, Edmonds, Grant, Hamlin, McPherson, Marshall, Roberts, Spink and Walworth, with court held at Aberdeen. The Southern Division covers Aurora, Beadle, Bon Homme, Brookings, Brule, Charles Mix, Clay, Davison, Douglas, Hanson, Hutchinson, Kingsbury, Lake, Lincoln, McCook, Miner, Minnehaha, Moody, Sanborn, Turner, Union and Yankton, with court held at Sioux Falls. The Central Division covers Buffalo, Dewey, Faulk, Gregory, Haakon, Hand, Hughes, Hyde, Jerauld, Jones, Lyman, Mellette, Potter, Stanley, Sully, Todd, Tripp and Ziebach, with court held at Pierre. The Western Division covers Bennett, Butte, Custer, Fall River, Harding, Jackson, Lawrence, Meade, Pennington, Perkins and Shannon, the county now named Oglala Lakota, with court held at Deadwood and Rapid City. A federal case from any South Dakota county is on that one docket and on PACER, whose prices and gaps are on the criminal records page.

Whether a person has a South Dakota state record: the Division answers it by fingerprint and signed release, $30 for the person and $50 with the FBI record, and for no one by name.

Whether a person was charged in a county: PARS answers it statewide for $20 a search, eCourts free for registered users, and the clerk of courts certifies the answer.

Whether a person was arrested: the arrest and the charge are open records, and the investigation behind them is not.

Whether a person is in custody now: the county sheriff's jail list answers it, and the Department of Corrections' locator for state prison and parole.

Whether an old case can still be found: a sealed arrest is closed everywhere the statute names, a conviction stays unless the sentence was suspended and the case dismissed, a judgment lien lapses at ten years and the judgment at twenty, and a copy that predates a sealing is reached through the federal rule.