USD Law grad retires from SD Supreme Court
The 48th justice in the history of the South Dakota Supreme Court and the second female justice, Wilbur was appointed to the state’s highest court in 2011 by Gov. Dennis Daugaard. She graduated from USD with a bachelor’s degree in government and criminal justice studies in 1974 and earned her law degree from the USD School of Law in 1977.
Before serving on the South Dakota Supreme Court, Wilbur represented the Fourth Supreme Court District, which is comprised of Union, Clay, Yankton, Hutchinson, Hanson, Davison, Bon Homme, Douglas, Aurora, Brule, Charles Mix, Gregory, Tripp, Lyman, McCook and Turner counties and a portion of Lincoln County. She held every judicial position in the South Dakota court system. She served first as a part-time, and then a full-time magistrate judge from 1992 to 1999. She took the bench as a circuit judge in 1999 after being elected in 1998, and was re-elected in 2006. Wilbur led the Sixth Circuit as presiding judge since 2007, and she served as a replacement justice on about 20 state Supreme Court cases.
As a circuit judge, Wilbur led the Sixth Circuit’s DUI Court program, which is an alternative sentencing program that seeks to address defendants’ underlying addictions.
A Madison, S.D. native, she and her late husband, Brent, have two grown daughters.
