The South Dakota Supreme Court has upheld the life sentence of Jonathon Klinetobe , the Rapid City man who enlisted two other men to murder his ex-girlfriend in 2015. Klinetobe pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter, and in December 2019, the judge imposed the maximum sentence of life without parole. A month later, Klinetobe argued to the Supreme Court that the sentence was too harsh. In its opinion issued Thursday, the Supreme Court disagrees.
In the opinion authored by Justice Mark Salter, the Supreme Court outlines the details of the 2015 crime:
Jonathon Klinetobe was furious when he was served with a protection order initiated by his former girlfriend, Jessica Rehfeld, after she broke up with him and he in turn texted obscenities and death threats.
Klinetobe convinced Richard Hirth and David Schneider that the Hell’s Angels were offering a bounty of $80,000 for killing Jessica, and enlisted a still-unidentified man to call and pose as a Hell’s Angel to confirm the story.
After the two co-conspirators kidnapped and stabbed Jessica to death in their car, they buried her body near Rockerville on Forest Service land.
Klinetobe visited the grave a number of times, driven there by a friend because he had a seizure disorder and could not drive. That friend eventually reported the crime to law enforcement.
Klinetobe later enlisted two friends to move her body to another burial site.
At oral arguments, Pennington County Public Defender Elizabeth Regalado tells justices that the sentencing judge did not adequately consider Jonathon Klinetobe’s mental disabilities.
“This man, or this boy, really, had a level of functioning which would suggest that he couldn’t have mastermind… or been the primary planner of any murder plot.”
She says the two men charged with committed the murder on May 18, 2015, are ex-military and more capable of strategic planning.
But Assistant Attorney General Paul Swedlund argues that Klinetobe had a four-day sentencing hearing in December 2019, and called in expert witnesses to testify to his mental issues.
Swedlund says those experts hesitated to predict that Klinetobe would eventually rehabilitate and no longer present a threat. In fact, one expert acknowledged that the characteristics that led Klinetobe to commit this crime were unlikely to be resolved through therapy.
Klinetobe presented himself to the judge as intellectually impaired, rather than as a sociopath, but Swedlund says neither condition can be cured.
He says Klinetobe avoided a mandatory life sentence by agreeing to plead guilty to first-degree manslaughter.
“But this was first degree capital murder, entirely premeditated, entirely organized and arranged by Jonathan Klinetobe, and but for JK, Jessica Rehfeld would be alive to this day.”
The Supreme Court says Klinetobe was clearly a leader in the plot to kill the victim, hide her body, and avoid detection, and justices unanimously upheld his sentence of life without parole.