PIERRE – United States Attorney Alison J. Ramsdell announced today that Chief Judge Roberto A. Lange of the United States District Court for the District of South Dakota sentenced a Mission man in South Dakota to prison for Assault With a Dangerous Weapon. The sentencing occurred on July 31, 2023.
Mission man Cordero Morris, a/k/a Cordero McIntire, 36, was sentenced to ten years in federal prison, three years of supervised release, and was ordered to pay a $100 special assessment to the Federal Crime Victims Fund.
The Mission man was indicted in January 2023 by a federal grand jury. On May 10, 2023, he entered a guilty plea.
On September 15, 2022, an incident near Mission resulted in the conviction. The Mission man was riding in a vehicle driven by the victim, Morris’s spouse and intimate partner, on that occasion.
The Mission man and the victim later got into a disagreement, and Morris pulled out a knife and cut the victim on her arm. The victim came to a halt and The Mission man got out, after which the victim drove away.
The victim then drove into Mission and went to the residence of a family member, who called 911. In April of 2023, while the case was pending trial, the Mission man called the victim from jail and attempted to persuade her to change her description of the incident and to say she did not remember what happened.
This case was investigated by the Rosebud Sioux Tribe Law Enforcement Services. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kirk Albertson prosecuted the case.
The US Attorney’s Office pursued this case because the Major Offenses Act, a federal statute, requires that certain serious offenses believed to have happened in Indian Country be prosecuted in federal court rather than state court.
The Mission man was promptly taken into the custody of the United States Marshals Service.