Track

Status

Governing provision

The elimination reaches only the top three felony classes — § 23A-42-1, in full: “There is no limitation on the time within which a prosecution for Class A, Class B, or Class C felony must be commenced.” South Dakota grades felonies as Class A, B and C — the classes carrying life imprisonment or death — and then Class 1 through Class 6. Only the first three are inside § 23A-42-1. 

Rape in the first degree is inside it; the lower degrees are not — § 22-22-1 grades rape by circumstance: first degree, where the victim is under thirteen, is a Class C felony and therefore unlimited. Second degree (force, coercion or threats) is a Class 1 felony; third degree (incapacity) a Class 2 felony; fourth degree (victim aged thirteen to fifteen with a perpetrator at least three years older, or without consent) a Class 3 felony. Classes 1, 2 and 3 are outside § 23A-42-1. 

SEVEN YEARS FOR EVERYTHING ELSE — § 23A-42-2, in full: “In all other prosecutions for a public offense and all proceedings of a quasi-criminal or penal nature, including the forfeiture of existing rights, the proceedings shall be commenced within seven years after the commission of the offense or crime which is the basis of the prosecution or proceedings, except as provided in § 23A-42-3.” Seven years from the act, with no tolling for the survivor’s minority anywhere in the section. 

AND A NAMED CHILD OFFENSE WITH ITS OWN DEADLINE — § 22-22-7.8 makes it a Class 6 felony for a person at least eighteen, at least five years older than the victim, in a position of authority or a family member within the fifth degree, knowingly to engage in sexual contact with a victim under eighteen who is not the person’s spouse. Its final paragraph reads: “Notwithstanding § 23A-42-2, a charge pursuant to this section may be brought at any time before the victim reaches the age of twenty-five or within seven years from the commission of the crime, whichever is longer.” 

Who counts as a position of authority — § 22-22-7.8: a person who, at the time of the contact or within the preceding hundred and twenty days, “interacts, no matter how briefly, with the victim as a coach, childcare provider, disability services provider, guardian ad litem, health care provider, law enforcement officer, mental health counselor, probation officer, religious leader, school administrator, social worker, teacher, therapist, or youth leader.” This is the section that reaches abuse by clergy, teachers and coaches — and it carries a deadline at twenty-five. 

Forgery and theft alone get a discovery rule — § 23A-42-3: where the defendant is charged with forgery or theft, the seven years runs from discovery of the crime, and failure of discovery must be pleaded and proven. No equivalent discovery rule exists for sexual offenses.

S.D.C.L. § 23A-42-1 — South Dakota Legislature, official statute text 

S.D.C.L. § 23A-42-2 — South Dakota Legislature, official statute text 

S.D.C.L. § 22-22-7.8 — South Dakota Legislature, official statute text 

S.D.C.L. § 22-22-1 (rape; felony classes) — South Dakota Legislature, official statute text

The rule, in full — § 26-10-25: “Any civil action based on intentional conduct brought by any person for recovery of damages for injury suffered as a result of childhood sexual abuse shall be commenced within three years of the act alleged to have caused the injury or condition, or three years of the time the victim discovered or reasonably should have discovered that the injury or condition was caused by the act, whichever period expires later. However, no person who has reached the age of forty years may recover damages from any person or entity other than the person who perpetrated the actual act of sexual abuse.” 

AT FORTY, EVERY INSTITUTION DROPS OUT — the second sentence is a hard cut-off, not a limitation period. It does not say a late claim against an institution is time-barred; it says no recovery may be had from anyone other than the actual perpetrator once the survivor turns forty, however timely the claim is under the first sentence. A survivor who discovers the causal connection at forty-two has three years to sue the abuser and no claim at all against the school, church or agency that employed him. 

That sentence was added in 2010 — SL 2010, ch. 141, § 1. The section as enacted in 1991 contained the three-year discovery rule alone. The 2010 amendment narrowed the class of defendants rather than the period, which is a distinct legislative move and one the tracker’s status column cannot show. 

The section reaches intentional conduct only — “Any civil action based on intentional conduct”. A negligence claim against an institution for negligent hiring, supervision or retention is not an action based on intentional conduct and appears to fall outside § 26-10-25 altogether, running instead on South Dakota’s general personal-injury period. That would make the forty-year cut-off largely redundant against institutions, which suggests the section is read more broadly in practice; no South Dakota authority on the point was retrieved and nothing is asserted. 

There is no age-based long-stop for claims against the perpetrator. The three-years-from-discovery limb has no outer cap, so a survivor who first connects injury to abuse at sixty has three years to sue the abuser. 

South Dakota differentiates by defendant in a way the status does not show: § 26-10-25 bars recovery against any person other than the perpetrator once the claimant reaches forty, whatever the discovery position. That is a flat age cut-off keyed to the identity of the defendant, and it is a different device from Oklahoma’s shorter institutional clock, Nebraska’s age-thirty-three cap and Utah’s narrow non-perpetrator definition.

S.D.C.L. § 26-10-25 — South Dakota Legislature, official statute text

Section 26-10-25 sets two periods running forward — three years from the act, three years from discovery — and adds a cut-off at forty against non-perpetrators. Nothing in it addresses a claim already barred when the section, or the 2010 amendment, took effect. 

The 2010 amendment moved in the restrictive direction. Where several states in this dataset amended their childhood provisions to reach backwards, SL 2010, ch. 141 added the age-forty bar on recovery from non-perpetrators. South Dakota is one of the few jurisdictions reviewed whose most recent civil amendment narrowed rather than widened the claim. 

No South Dakota appellate decision on the constitutionality of retroactive revival was located, and none is asserted. Because no window has ever been enacted, the vested-rights question that produced Thompson v. Killary, Mitchell v. Roberts, Aurora Public Schools v. A.S., Dupuis, Ball, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington v. Doe and McKinney v. Goins has not arisen here.

S.D.C.L. § 26-10-25 — South Dakota Legislature, official statute text