South Dakota executed a man who fatally stabbed a former co-worker during a 1992 burglary, the Associated Press reports. Charles Rhines used his last words Monday to speak directly to the parents of his victim, forgiving them for your anger and hatred towards me.” The parents refused to acknowledge him. Rhines, 63, ambushed 22-year-old Donnivan Schaefer in 1992 when Schaefer surprised him as he burglarized a Rapid City doughnut shop where Schaeffer worked. Rhines had been fired a few weeks earlier.
Steve Allender, a police detective at the time of the killing who is now Rapid City’s mayor, said the jury sentenced Rhines to death partly because of Rhines’ “chilling laughter” as he described Schaeffer’s death spasms. Rhines challenged the state’s use of pentobarbital, arguing it wasn’t the ultra-fast-acting drug he was entitled to. A judge ruled it was as fast or faster than other drugs when used in lethal doses. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected that appeal, as well as his arguments that he was sentenced to die by a jury with an anti-gay bias and that he wasn’t given access to experts who could have examined him for cognitive and psychiatric impairments.