PIERRE, S.D. — The South Dakota Supreme Court has ruled against a convicted murderer in his bid for a new trial.
Arnson Absolu was convicted of an August 2020 double homicide in Rapid City’s Thompson Park, as well as the murder of a person believed to have accompanied him to the double homicide.
A lower court denied Absolu’s efforts to get a new trial based on information that — he claimed — prosecutors failed to disclose about one of the witnesses at the initial trial.
In its ruling Thursday, the high court said that while the circuit court’s broad discovery order would have covered at least some of the information in question, Absolu did not prove that his case was prejudiced by the state’s failure to disclose it, and therefore the lower court did not err when it denied Absolu’s motion for a new trial.
