Although the very early release of a handful of convicted criminals does threaten public confidence in our judicial system, as S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster's office noted last week, it’s not logical to argue that it also underscores the need for lawmakers to “close the revolving door on violent offenders and crack down on career criminals and illegal guns.”
The Legislature absolutely needs to pass both measures, and we’re particularly disturbed that lawmakers who claim to support police and making our communities safer are blocking efforts to increase the penalties for convicted criminals caught with guns.
But those bills won’t do anything to stop judges from releasing already-convicted prisoners who provide “substantial assistance” to the state in prosecuting other criminals or in protecting correctional officers from attack, as a 2010 law allows.
We’re not even sure there’s anything wrong with the “substantial assistance” law, which mimics the sort of preferential treatment criminals can get for their assistance, through plea bargains and other sentencing reductions, before they are convicted or sentenced.
Well, there's nothing wrong with it except for the insufficient guardrails to ensure sentence reductions are handled in a fully transparent, public process, and don’t violate other laws — neither of which was the case in late December when retiring Circuit Judge Casey Manning slashed a murderer’s sentence nearly in half.
That ruling came in violation of the law that requires murderers to serve at least 30 years (Jeroid Price had served just 19). And in violation of the law that requires the local solicitor rather than the defense attorney to request the downward departure in writing. And in violation the law that requires our Circuit Courts' work to be public, rather than conducted via private gatherings in chambers and sealed orders that don't even include a notation to the public that there's some kind of order that has been sealed. And in violation of the law that requires victims of crimes to be notified in advance of any actions concerning the people who victimized them or their loved ones. And the provision in the state constitution that requires our courts to be open.
Mr. Price’s sentence reduction, orchestrated by lawyer-legislator Todd Rutherford, was such an egregious misapplication of state law that the S.C. Supreme Court held a hasty hearing and rescinded it within days of our newspaper bringing it to public attention.
In response to that case — and the justices’ own suggestions at oral arguments that there likely were similar cases out there — Mr. McMaster appropriately asked his Corrections Department to look into how many other prisoners had their sentences reduced under the substantial assistance law. Last week, the agency released records showing there have been 26 more since the start of 2022, seven of which resulted in the immediate release of prisoners.
It’s not clear that any of them violated as many laws as Mr. Price’s release. Only one reduced a murderer’s sentence to less than 30 years, and it appears that Nicholas Geer, who had served 27 years of his sentence, was convicted before the 30-year-minimum law was passed. But as The Post and Courier’s Caitlin Ashworth reports, most of the records make no mention of outreach to the victims.
That doesn’t prove that victims weren’t notified and given their legally guaranteed opportunity to attend hearings, or that what passed for hearings were held in private meetings with the judge and without the written court records that the law requires. But it certainly suggests it, and warrants further investigation, particularly when you combine it with the court's unusual statement last week that seemed to defend the secrecy that conflicts with at least two state laws and the state constitution.
After the Corrections Department released the records, the usually reticent Judicial Department released a statement providing what it called "background” on criminal sentence reductions. The two-page release recited the law, correctly noted that judges neither wrote the law nor make the requests to reduce sentences and argued that “Unfortunately, the context of the reduction request is sometimes unknown to the general public due to the sensitive nature of the information supporting the request.”
In truth, the request is unknown to the public due to a judge’s decision to make it unknown to the public — a decision that might have a legitimate basis or might not, and about which a majority of the S.C. Supreme Court seems to have serious reservations.
The 3-2 order last month revoking Mr. Price’s release cited the 30-year minimum law for murderers and the two laws and constitutional provision that require open courts.
What’s unfortunate is that the statement from the Judicial Department seems to downplay those concerns. Even more unfortunately, the high court still hasn’t released its promised full opinion explaining the basis for its decision to revoke Mr. Price’s early release.
We hope that opinion will be quickly forthcoming — and we hope it will send the message that some Circuit Court judges apparently need to hear about their obligation to do their work in public.
In fact, it wouldn’t hurt for the high court to go beyond simply releasing that promised opinion and issue a public statement — speaking for all five justices — that makes it unequivocally clear that it expects judges to do their work in public, and by the books, in compliance with our laws and the constitution. And making it clear that it will no more tolerate Circuit Court judges who go rogue than the many magistrates who do likewise.
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