A bank robber serving federal time for threatening Yankton bank employees with a fake bomb is appealing his sentence. David Giese asked a South Dakota federal district court for an evidentiary hearing in a bid for a lighter sentence. When that failed, he took the issue to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Appellate judges heard arguments Thursday.
When David Giese robbed the Wells Fargo bank in Yankton in the summer of 2016, he put a box on the counter and said it contained a bomb. After the teller handed over money, Giese left the box there and announced the bomb would detonate if bank employees didn’t wait 30 minutes to call the police.
Giese entered into a plea agreement with federal prosecutors and was sentenced to 48 months in prison.
At oral arguments, he is represented by Sioux Falls attorney Alex Hagen, who tells three appellate judges that Giese’s sentence failed to consider that the fake bomb presented no danger.
Hagen says Giese didn’t do more than set the fake bomb on the counter, unlike defendants in other robbery cases whose conduct was more serious.
“There’s lighting the fuse. There’s pressing a detonator. In those cases there is something more than merely showing it and making some step to represent that it’s dangerous. You know, when my client walked in the bank, he had a box.”
If the sentencing judge had found that Giese simply brandished the weapon, Hagen says Giese could have argued that his conduct was aberrant, thereby qualifying for a lesser sentence.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Clapper points out that bank employees didn’t know there was no bomb in the box, and they testified at the sentencing hearing that they felt a real threat.
Clapper says neither the state nor the defense objected to facts that the judge relied on to craft a sentence.
“What we have here is what typically happens in cases where there’s a plea agreement. There are facts that aren’t contested when the presentence report comes out. The parties, you know, accept what the outcome is.”
Clapper says if Giese had sought a downward departure from standard sentencing, the government would have asked for an enhanced sentence.
The court will deliberate and issue an opinion at a later date.