Janklow, William

William Janklow (1939–2012) was the state attorney general and four-time governor of South Dakota, and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. As South Dakota's state attorney general, Janklow successfully argued an important Fourth Amendment case: South Dakota v. Opperman (1976).

Born in Chicago in 1939, Janklow dropped out of high school. However, he managed to get into the University of South Dakota, where he earned both an undergraduate and a law degree in 1964 and 1967, respectively. He worked for Legal Services for several years, before serving as the state's chief prosecutor. He then served as the state's attorney general from 1975 to 1979. In that capacity, he successfully argued South Dakota v. Opperman (1976) before the Supreme Court. In that decision, the Court ruled that police officers did not violate the Fourth Amendment when they searched a vehicle for inventory purposes that had been impounded for parking ticket violations. The Court recognized the “community caretaking function” that police exercise when taking cars into custody.

Janklow resigned from the U.S. House of Representatives in 2004, after a conviction for manslaughter resulting from an automobile accident that occurred after he ran a stop sign. He died in January 2012, at the age of seventy-two. A month before, he had announced he was suffering from brain cancer.