Kamisha’s law and a push to hold killers accountable

RAPID CITY – Kamisha was a toddler from Sisseton, South Dakota, who was violently murdered in 1992. The perpetrator, Jay Adams Jr admitted to inflicting blunt force trauma, failed to seek medical attention for her injuries, and pretended to know nothing of the cause of her death as he continued to live with Kamisha’s mother.

For more than three decades, Christine Nyvold has carried the weight of the violent crime that stole her young daughter’s life and exposed the failures of the very institutions that were supposed to protect her. Today, she is channeling that grief into a federal effort known as “Kamisha’s Law” — a push to remove statutes of limitations on certain homicide and manslaughter crimes and to close loopholes that still reward convicted offenders with “good time” credits

Nyvold, who spoke at the annual South Dakota Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) Conference in Rapid City at the Ramkota on May 1, described the proposed law as one of the few measures that “actually has teeth” in a criminal justice landscape where families are often left waiting for accountability that never comes.

“We’re really pushing to get awareness out there and get people to, especially tribes, to sign on and to talk about it and to understand how important it is,” she said. “The main purpose is to get rid of that [statute of limitations]. Ten years isn’t enough for something that was so violent to such a small child.”

Kamisha’s Law, as Nyvold explained it, would remove the statute of limitations on second-degree murder and address certain manslaughter offenses, ensuring that time alone cannot erase the possibility of prosecution. The bill has been introduced in Congress and is now before the judiciary committees. South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson has signed onto the House version, but Nyvold said national politics and competing priorities in Washington have slowed its progress.

“If it wasn’t for this war and what’s going on with the White House, I think it would have been passed by now,” she said. “I do have faith that it’s going to pass.”

Yet even if Kamisha’s Law is enacted, Nyvold sees another problem embedded in federal sentencing policy. The man convicted in connection with her daughter’s death, she said, receives 54 days a year off his sentence for so-called good behavior — a benefit rooted in federal statute and amended by the 2018 First Step Act.

“They say everybody gets good credit, except… and then they list all the exceptions, and one of them is murder,” Nyvold said, describing the law. “Then it says underneath there, there’s another subparagraph that says except manslaughter. So you can’t get it if you’re convicted of murder, but you can get it if you’re just convicted of manslaughter — but there’s all different levels of manslaughter. I feel like that has to change.”

For now, Nyvold is taking the battle one step at a time. “I’m just doing one thing at a time, because I don’t want senators and representatives to say, ‘Oh my God, now what does she want?’” she added. “Right now I’m just trying to get this other law passed and changed first.”

Her advocacy is rooted in a long history of feeling dismissed and blamed by authorities. Nyvold recounted a 1992 encounter with federal investigators after a key witness, Joey, shared information about what he had seen as a child. When Joey’s mother told Nyvold what her son had revealed, Nyvold immediately drove to Sioux Falls to relay it to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“I was met with a finger in my face, yelling it was my fault that the suspect was not arrested,” she said. “I knew they weren’t there to help me, and that was the last time I voluntarily went to them to try and get something done.”

Years later, after the case was finally revisited, Nyvold learned how much that early dismissal had cost her and her family. Joey, who carried his memories in silence for decades, was nearly destroyed by the burden, she said. Watching him testify in court was “heartbreaking,” but she believes it was his path to freedom.

“Somehow he knew in his heart that it was the right thing to do, and he went through with it,” she said. “I think he knew that was his key to be truly free of all of this.”

Despite her anger at the system, Nyvold has built deep relationships with the investigators and prosecutors who ultimately helped reopen the case. She spoke of some of the FBI agents as family, even as she refused to minimize past failures by federal agencies in Indian Country

“It was an institution that hurt me so bad, but we had to move forward and find forgiveness,” she said. “That doesn’t mean we forget how the system failed. I can almost guarantee you I am not the only story out there where the system failed. We need to rebuild our relationship with the U.S. Attorney’s Office and with the FBI.”

Nyvold argued that Indian Country needs federal agents and prosecutors who are committed to the communities they serve. “We don’t need FBI agents in South Dakota that are not committed to the communities in which they work,” she said. “If they don’t want to be here, they need to go somewhere else. We want people that want to be here.”

That vision is part of the reason she and her husband, Roger, have created a scholarship program focused on careers in law enforcement, law, social work and related fields. They want Native people in those roles, she said, because they understand the unique challenges facing their communities and are invested in change.

“Currently, the scholarship isn’t completely funded, so we’ve just been funding it out of our pockets,” she noted. “But we’re close. We’re really close.”

Roger, who spoke alongside Nyvold, described himself as an “in-law victim” — a stepfather who never knew Kamisha but has spent years witnessing the aftershocks of her death. A former BIA law enforcement officer and DHS employee, he said even his professional experience did not prepare him for the toll of watching Nyvold relive the case through renewed investigations and public testimony

“If I’m feeling the way I feel, I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a child,” he said, at times fighting back tears. He urged more men to step up in the movement for missing and murdered people, saying too much of the work has been left to women holding families and communities together.

Nyvold, meanwhile, continues to press for action. She has combed through public records, emailed tribal officials across the country, and urged relatives and friends in other states to contact members of the judiciary committees considering Kamisha’s Law. She encourages others to do the same, pointing people to online congressional trackers and urging them to call or write their own representatives.

“I didn’t always have faith that anything was going to change for me,” she admitted. For years, she assumed the man responsible for her daughter’s death might only confess “on his deathbed.” But the unexpected call from the FBI — and the eventual indictment — shifted that sense of finality.

Now, with a federal bill bearing her daughter’s name, a scholarship taking shape, and a growing chorus of families demanding reform, Nyvold sees her struggle as part of something larger.

“We’re not the only story,” she said. “If you ever get the chance to work on Kamisha’s Law, or you know somebody in another state, ask them to support it. We need to correct this.”

(Contact Marnie Cook at cookm8715@gmail.com)

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