Court denies former lawmaker's bid for freedom

A former state lawmaker convicted of raping his two foster daughters has lost another bid for a new trial.

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Ted Klaudt’s bid for a new trial Tuesday, affirming a district court judge who ruled last year that she did not have the jurisdiction to grant Klaudt a new trial.

Klaudt, 59, served eight years in the South Dakota House of Representatives before losing a bid in 2006 for a state Senate seat representing Corson County. Six months later authorities arrested him after five girls, including legislative pages, told authorities that Klaudt assaulted them.

Authorities brought charges in two cases where Klaudt was accused of performing “ovary checks” and “breast exams” in order to help them donate their reproductive eggs. A Hughes County jury convicted him of four counts of rape in January 2008 and Klaudt was sentenced to 44 years as well as another 10 years for witness tampering.

Over the years, Klaudt has made headlines from his cell in the Mike Durfee State Prison in Springfield. In 2009 he sent notices to news outlets claiming that he had copyrighted his name. He warned that reporters who used his name without prior approval would be fined $2 million for each usage.

In 2010 he sent a letter to President Obama in an attempt to renounce his citizenship. He claimed that his Hughes County trial was really an unlawful military tribunal.

Later that year he wrote a federal judge saying he had evidence that the state had misused millions of dollars in federal funds. He threatened to turn over documents to Fox News if his legal problems weren’t resolved.

In his latest bid for a new trial, Klaudt argues that state law didn’t make his actions illegal at the time he committed them. He said he was convicted after state law was changed.

“Petitioner Ted Alvin Klaudt © has been deprived of basic fundamental rights guaranteed by Article one of the Constitution of the United States of America’s, Ex Post Facto clause, and seeks to restore these rights in this court,” he wrote. “The respondent’s (sic) have deprived the petitioner of his Liberty, by use of an Ex Post Facto Law(s).”