South Carolina’s forfeiture statutes are unconstitutional and need to be reformed. For too long, police have abused the forfeiture process, enriching their departments at the expense of citizens who, in some cases, have not even committed a crime. Forfeiture funds have become a source of recurring expenses for law enforcement agencies, supplementing their budgets and [..]
SC needs grand jury reform now. The grand jury system, devised hundreds of years ago, was designed and intended to allow ordinary people to decide whether a person should be charged with a crime. The grand jury was to serve as the gatekeepers, ensuring that the government did not arrest and prosecute persons when there [..]
Animal cruelty is a crime in SC – people are often arrested for alleged mistreatment of dogs, horses, or other pets or livestock. Where do we draw the line, though? Most charges of animal cruelty in SC are related to neglect or mistreatment of dogs or horses, although the law clearly applies to most animals. [..]
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard defendants (but not their attorneys) say, “should I take the first plea offer?” “Never take the first plea offer” is a myth that is often repeated by inmates talking at the jail. I’m not saying you should take the first plea offer. Or the second, third, or fourth [..]
When you are sentenced to prison in South Carolina, you lose most of your rights. You lose your right to do what you want, to eat what you want, to sleep when you want, and to visit with friends or family when you want. You get the most basic necessary medical care, but you lose [..]
Prison officials spend a lot of time, money, and other resources controlling what comes out of prisons – their goal, after all, is to keep the inmates inside. But, South Carolina has found that it’s even more difficult to keep control of what goes into prisons. SC Gov. Henry McMaster recently issued an executive order [..]
When Claudia James Sullivan became an attorney in 1918, she still wasn’t allowed to vote. Why? Because she was a woman. The United States Constitution did not allow women to vote in national elections. In some places across the country, women were allowed to vote in state and local elections, but not in South Carolina. [..]
A woman in New York was charged with five counts of endangering the welfare of a child after police say she left her children at home for more than a day. The oldest child was 14, the youngest 1. In Kentucky, a pregnant woman was arrested after she left three children at home alone for [..]
Here’s an issue that potentially may affect every SC attorney at some point in the future – the time to serve a notice of appeal begins when you receive an email telling you that an order or judgment has been entered in your case… This decision could easily slip under the radar for many attorneys [..]
Everything. What the girl did was unthinkable and, from someone who has two small children, horrifying. But the facts do not fit the crime that she was charged with, either – the charges, the prosecution, the trial, the conviction were all wrong. Furthermore, the fact that the girl was tried by a juvenile court judge [..]
