Mike Durfee State Prison (S.D. Dept. of Corrections)
SPRINGFILED, S.D. (SOUTH DAKOTA SEARCHLIGHT) – Eleven people, including a former prison food service contract worker, inmates alleged to be gang members and non-inmates have been indicted in Bon Homme County on a host of drug-related charges tied to a November overdose death at Mike Durfee State Prison in Springfield.
South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley announced the charges at a press conference in Pierre. The charges flow from an inquiry led by the state Division of Criminal Investigation into the November death of inmate Timothy Tyree, one of eight men who died of drug overdoses in the state’s prisons last year.
All but one of those deaths has been linked to K2, a synthetic drug typically sprayed on paper and smoked. To the naked eye, paper soaked in K2 is indistinguishable from untainted paper.
In addition to the charges, investigators seized three sheets of K2 with 61 stamp-sized doses, said Jackley. The day Tyree was found unresponsive, Jackley said, “numerous individuals” at Durfee were “sick from K2.”
Last year, Jackley’s office charged inmates, a former correctional officer and others outside the prison walls in connection with other overdose deaths at the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls and the penitentiary’s Jameson Annex.
“I think we’re slowing it down,” he said of drug trafficking in the state’s prisons.
The distribution ring in Springfield that was broken up in the current investigation hinged on the alleged cooperation of a now-former contract worker in the Durfee kitchen. People outside the prison would deliver the K2 to her, Jackley explained, and she would hand it off to inmates inside the prison for distribution from there.
The most serious charge faced by the 11 is distribution of controlled substances resulting in death. Each person was indicted on that charge, which carries a penalty of up to 25 years in prison.
Two of the inmates indicted in the Tyree case have detainment orders from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Jackley said, meaning they’d have been handed off to ICE upon parole.
Jackley said his office intends to pursue the state-level charges in the indictments, but he would defer to the federal agency on what happens when the parole dates arrive later this year.
“To the extent it makes more sense to have ICE take further action, I will be supportive of that and will work with them on those decisions,” Jackley said.
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