Issues

Drug abuse is the largest driver of crime in the United States with 5 people dying every day from fentanyl overdose in South Carolina.  I sit on the board of a long-standing county wide narcotics task force and meet monthly with the sheriff and every chief to stay on top of this issue.  I led the fight for a fentanyl trafficking statute in South Carolina which Governor McMaster signed into law last August.  My drug court has been saving lives for over 20 years by helping addicts overcome their addiction and I am currently working with leaders in Columbia to develop a way to help more addicts into the program.

Shutting the revolving door that allows repeat offenders to bond out of jail again and again was a huge problem in South Carolina.  I worked to highlight this problem and build the will to fix it.  Last year the South Carolina General Assembly passed a comprehensive bond reform bill that addresses many of the problems we were facing and ensures that those violent offenders who bond out and reoffend face additional charges as a result and have a much harder time securing another bond.

South Carolina is one of only two states in the country where the legislature elect’s our judges, they pay our judges, and they can fire our judges.  Lawyers in the legislature can then practice law in front of the judges they hired.  This does not allow for a truly independent judiciary.  Legislator-lawyers can abuse this process, and some do it regularly.  Over the last two years I have led the drive to speak out publicly about this problem in an effort to drive reform.  This year, for the first time, it is paying dividends as bills have been filed in both the House and Senate to fix the problem.  It has also led to judicial elections being stopped in the legislature by filibuster until meaningful change is enacted.

From 1995 until 2020, when the Chief Justice of the SC Supreme Court mandated that the circuit judges assume management of all South Carolina criminal dockets I managed the criminal docket in the 16^th Circuit.  In 1995 I implemented an innovative method for case management that became the model for the state.  Each month the Supreme Court would publish a caseload efficiency report and each month for 25 years the 16^th Circuit led the state.  The Covid crisis wrought havoc on dockets across the state and last year I worked with my colleagues and the Supreme Court to help establish a new case management order that allows for more input from the prosecution.  Thanks to a tremendous effort from the attorneys and staff in our office we have reduced the overall caseload back to where it was pre-Covid.  We are working hard to schedule the backlog of trials that accumulated as a result of the 13-month shutdown of the South Carolina Court system.

In 2010 the General Assembly passed a criminal justice sentencing reform bill that overhauled our sentencing policy in the state.  The express purpose was to reduce the population of our prisons by reducing the severity of sentences.  Since then, our prison population today is down to approximately 15,000 from nearly 25,000 in 2010.  Back then I actively monitored the legislation as it was being debated and worked to push back against the worst ideas proposed.  Now, nearly 15 years later it is clear that these light sentencing policies have resulted in diminished public safety for our citizens and need revisiting.  Repeat property crime offenders no longer fear the consequences of their actions and offenders placed on probation are rarely revoked and sent to prison when they reoffend or violate their probation.  Revocation rates have dropped from 36% in 2010 to as low as 7% in 2021.  I have been speaking out about this for several years and will continue to advocate for policies that hold criminals accountable and drive them to change their behavior.

Any veteran law enforcement professional will tell you that we cannot lock up everyone. With the right intervention, many people whose criminal behavior is driven by an underlying problem such as drug addiction, mental illness or combat related trauma can be helped.  We have established programs that have worked for years to help those willing to help themselves with all of these issues, and I was proud to support the recent initiative by the Rock Hill Municipal Court to intervene in the lives of those homeless people who have been driven to engage in petty crimes as a result of their condition.  Unfortunately, because so many criminals view a probationary sentence as the easiest way to resolve their case, too many of these offenders do not take advantage of the resources we offer.  Though our programs are challenging for the participants, they make a difference, and I am working to find ways to compel more offenders to participate.

Juvenile Justice is arguably the most important issue I deal with in my work.  Preventing children from becoming career, adult criminals is a goal we can all get behind.  Unlike adult prosecution where the goals are to punish and rehabilitate the juvenile system primarily seeks to rehabilitate all but the very worst of the young offenders who come through it.  By putting a child on the right path we not only prevent future crimes we help them learn to be productive citizens.  Our juvenile prosecution unit applies a graduated response for most juvenile offenders charged with low level offenses.  As they continue to exhibit delinquent behavior we gradually increase the severity of the response in an effort to get their attention.  Most of the kids who come through our programs learn quickly and we never hear from them again.  For the worst of them, our response can be incarceration at the Department of Juvenile Justice or even having them waived up and tried in General Sessions as adults. For kids whose criminal behavior involves drug use our Juvenile Drug Court has saved countless children and their families from a lifetime of addiction and sorrow.

A few winning entries from the 16 years of our annual Make Good Choices calendar contest are below!