Supreme Court upholds life sentence for Wessington Springs man who killed wife's 90-year-old grandmother

Mitch LeRoy Caffee had argued sentence constituted cruel and unusual punishment

A Wessington Springs man sentenced to life behind bars for shooting a 90-year-old woman in the head will never get out of prison after losing an appeal this week.

The South Dakota Supreme Court, in a ruling released Thursday, found that the life sentence handed down by a Jerauld County Court last year to Mitch LeRoy Caffee after he killed his wife’s grandmother during a domestic dispute did not violate the abuser’s constitutional rights.

Caffee, sentenced to life in prison in August 2022 after being convicted of first-degree manslaughter and aggravated assault, had argued that the punishment handed down from the lower court was disproportionately severe because he did not intend to kill his wife’s grandma when he forcibly entered her home. His appeal also noted that of the 94 manslaughter sentences imposed in the prior 10 years in South Dakota, only three others were life sentences.

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