SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) – A convicted killer executed in South Dakota used his last words to speak to the parents of his victim.
Charles Rhines was executed Monday evening at the state prison in Sioux Falls for the 1992 slaying of 22-year-old Donnivan Schaeffer.
Media witnesses said Rhines used his last words to tell Ed and Peggy Schaeffer that “I forgive you for your anger and hatred towards me.”
The Schaeffers said they wanted to talk about their son, not Rhines. They say they were “so blessed to have this young man in our family and in our life.”
South Dakota’s attorney general is using the execution of a death row inmate to remember the victim.
Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg says that worker, Donnivan Schaeffer, was “funny, kind and a hard worker” with a bright future awaiting him after he was to finish at Western Dakota Tech. He says Schaeffer loved hunting and fishing and was engaged to be married.
Shawn Nolan, an attorney for Rhines, called it “very sad and profoundly unjust” that Rhines was executed without a court hearing evidence of what he called gay bias influencing the jury’s death sentence.
An investigator in the case said the jury reacted to Rhines’ chilling confession, not his sexuality. The U.S. Supreme Court twice declined to consider that argument.
Rhines ambushed Schaeffer when Schaeffer interrupted him as he was burglarizing the doughnut shop where Schaeffer worked. Rhines had been fired a few weeks earlier.
