State v. Cadotte

CourtSouth Dakota Supreme Court
DecidedMay 13, 2026
Docket31148
StatusPublished

This text of State v. Cadotte (State v. Cadotte) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering South Dakota Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Cadotte, (S.D. 2026).

Opinion

#31148-a-MES 2026 S.D. 28

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA

STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA, Plaintiff and Appellee,

v.

TELL LOGAN CADOTTE, Defendant and Appellant.

APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE SEVENTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT PENNINGTON COUNTY, SOUTH DAKOTA

THE HONORABLE ROBERT GUSINSKY Judge

MATTHEW R. MIRABELLA of South Dakota Office of Indigent Legal Services Sioux Falls, South Dakota Attorneys for defendant and appellant.

MARTY J. JACKLEY Attorney General

ROBERTO NOLASCO-CRUZ Legal Intern

SARAH THORNE Deputy Attorney General

ERIN E. HANDKE Assistant Attorney General Pierre, South Dakota Attorneys for plaintiff and appellee.

ARGUED APRIL 21, 2026 OPINION FILED 05/13/26 #31148

SALTER, Justice

[¶1.] A jury found Tell Cadotte guilty on nine counts of first-degree rape and

one count of sexual contact with a person under the age of sixteen. Cadotte now

appeals, arguing that the circuit court failed to provide him with a reasonable

remedy to correct an alleged discovery violation and that the court admitted

prejudicial hearsay over defense counsel’s objection. We affirm.

Factual and Procedural History

[¶2.] On January 27, 2021, Tina Cadotte picked up A.R., her eight-year-old

daughter, from school in Rapid City. Once at home, Tina and A.R. went to the

bathroom to wash “the school germs” off their hands. While A.R. was washing, she

told her mother that Tell Cadotte, A.R.’s thirty-year-old half-brother, “was weird.”

She explained that Cadotte “would do weird things” to her whenever he babysat. In

explaining to her mother what “weird things” Cadotte had done, A.R. disclosed

details of sexual abuse that spanned two years.

[¶3.] That same evening, A.R. accompanied her parents to the Public Safety

Building to report the abuse to the police. Two days later, A.R. sat for a forensic

interview with a trained forensic interviewer at the Child Advocacy Center. During

this interview, A.R. drew four sexually explicit pictures, two of which depicted sex

acts that Cadotte made her perform. She also referred to having seen a video of

these sexual acts on Cadotte’s cell phone.

[¶4.] Based on the information A.R. disclosed during her forensic interview,

Detective Seth Walker with the Rapid City Police Department sought and received

a warrant to search Cadotte’s residence for electronic devices that could contain

-1- #31148

child pornography. Though home when the officers arrived to execute the warrant,

Cadotte did not respond to the officers’ knock-and-announce efforts. The officers

ultimately forced entry into Cadotte’s home, where they found him in the basement

and in close proximity to two laptop computers that were running encryption

software and a program called “Eraser,” which shreds electronic files.

[¶5.] In addition to the two laptops, officers seized ten other electronic

devices, including phones and flash drives. These devices were turned over to the

Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force for forensic examination.

Despite the efforts to encrypt or erase electronic data, the ICAC examiner recovered

more than 300 photos and/or videos depicting child pornography from the laptops.

The remaining electronic devices were either too broken to examine or were fully

encrypted, or they did not contain contraband images.

[¶6.] Detective Walker later met with the ICAC examiner to review the

recovered photos. Of all the images reviewed, forty-one of them were identified as

depicting the same child victim. Several of these photos showed a young female

child performing fellatio on an adult man. In each photo the child’s eyes were

covered using a hat, sleep mask, blindfold, or a piece of fabric. The photos were

taken from a side profile near the male’s waist, so none of the images exposed the

male subject’s face. In some of the photos, however, Detective Walker recognized a

distinctive “white belt with plaid designs.” The belt stood out to Detective Walker

because, in his words, “it was the same belt that [he] saw hanging in Tell Cadotte’s

closet” depicted in one of the photographs taken during the search warrant

execution.

-2- #31148

[¶7.] Detective Walker met with Tina and showed her sanitized copies of the

photos depicting the single child victim “to try and get a positive identification on

the young female in the photos and to attempt to locate any other evidence to

corroborate where and who may have taken those photos.”1 Detective Walker’s

report of the interview indicates that Tina “reviewed all of the images and found 23

different pictures involving [A.R.], [A.R.’s] clothing, or household items that

belonged to her family . . . .” The report also identifies specific items that Tina

recognized, including “a white and blue night gown, pink fuzzy pillow, sleep masks,

Peppa Pig hat, black/white blanket, yellow shirt, Hello Kitty blanket, pink pajamas

with black sleeves, and a gold mirror.”

[¶8.] A couple days after Detective Walker’s meeting with Tina, the circuit

court authorized a second search warrant for Cadotte’s residence; this time to

search for the belt and other items in the sanitized photographs that Tina had

recognized. Officers were unable to locate and collect the white plaid belt, but they

did collect other items that appeared in some of the photos, such as blankets,

leopard print towels, sleep masks, and a hat.

[¶9.] That same day, Cadotte was arrested pursuant to a complaint that

alleged first-degree rape, among other charges. On March 17, 2021, a Pennington

County grand jury returned a thirteen-count indictment charging Cadotte with

twelve counts of first-degree rape in violation of SDCL 22-22-1(1) and one count of

sexual contact with a child under the age of sixteen in violation of SDCL 22-22-7.

1. At trial, the State described a sanitized photograph as a picture that contains child pornography, but the sexually explicit content has been blacked out. -3- #31148

[¶10.] Each of the rape counts contained identical allegations of sexual

penetration upon A.R. “on or between the 1st day of September, 2016, through the

31st of August 2020, inclusive[.]” The sexual contact count alleged an act of sexual

contact with A.R. “on or about the 26th day of January, 2021,” and related to an

allegation that Cadotte forced her to masturbate him while he was driving her to

her grandfather’s house.

[¶11.] Cadotte pled not guilty, and the case remained pending for four years,

largely due to a related federal prosecution arising from the contraband images

found on his laptop computers. Cadotte eventually pled guilty to possessing child

pornography in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2252(a)(2)(A), and a federal district court

judge sentenced him to twenty years’ imprisonment, all prior to the state court rape

trial, which began in March 2025.

[¶12.] Before beginning testimony, defense counsel asked the circuit court to

make a record of what it claimed was undisclosed evidence.2 Once on the record,

defense counsel explained that upon entering the courtroom that morning, she

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State v. Cadotte, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-cadotte-sd-2026.