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Your connection to industry & member news | March 27, 2025
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SCPA can run SLED criminal background checks for news storiesSCPA is able to run South Carolina Law Enforcement Division criminal background checks for S.C. newspaper and online news publication journalists. Background checks are for news stories only, including checks on candidates for office.
To obtain a SLED check, call SCPA at (803) 750-9561 during business hours with the full name and date of birth. We’ll email you the results within minutes.
Here are a few more things to note:
- The newly launched SLED CATCH database only returns criminal background reports as PDF files so reports are now emailed to members as PDF files.
- If you are not on deadline, you may email your requests to Jen Madden.
- We are unable to run a SLED check without the full date of birth.
- SLED CATCH will only returns criminal record information from South Carolina. Here's info about getting records from our border states.
- After hours and on weekends, reporters must go to SLED directly and pay the $25 fee.
- You may not run a check through SCPA on potential employees. For those, you must go to the SLED website and pay the fee.
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Anti-SLAPP bill crosses to Senate H. 3305, the South Carolina Public Expression Protection Act (anti-SLAPP), passed third reading in the House yesterday and was read across the Senate desk. The bill has now been referred to Senate Judiciary.
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Annual Meeting Awards Luncheon sold out
Please note that no late or same-day registrations will be accepted for the Annual Meeting Awards Luncheon on April 4 as we are at room capacity for the ballroom where the luncheon will be held. Only ticketed registrants may attend this event. Registrants will receive a detailed meeting confirmation on Monday. We can't wait to see more than 200 SCPA members and friends next week!
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| Thanks 2025 Annual Meeting Sponsors!
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We could not have a successful, affordable Annual Meeting without the help of these generous sponsors.
Please take a moment to get to know the representatives of these special organizations!
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"Journalism and telling truth to power has to be waged like war is waged. It doesn't just happen accidentally. You know, it takes people saying, we're gonna do these stories and you're gonna have to come after us. And that's the way it is."
- George Clooney in interview with CBS 60 Minutes
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Lawsuit against The Post and Courier dismissed after judge says it violates First Amendment
A judge dismissed a lawsuit filed against The Post and Courier by the Ninth Circuit Public Defender's Office, saying it violated the First Amendment.
Circuit Court Judge Kristi Curtis signed a March 18 order granting the newspaper's request to dismiss the suit after she heard arguments in January from both parties.
Curtis' decision comes roughly six months after the public defender's office sued The Post and Courier to block the publication of information contained in a defendant's mental health evaluation.
Reporter Alan Hovorka published a story Sept. 13 detailing the criminal proceedings against Theodore Wagner Jr., which local judges paused after finding him not competent to stand trial. Wagner was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital in Columbia.
Wagner was charged with murder and attempted murder after he allegedly used a hatchet to kill Sean Strojny and injure his girlfriend in August 2022 behind the Walmart on James Island.
Hovorka lawfully obtained Wagner's court-ordered psychiatric evaluation. The 38-page document, which is considered confidential, was mistakenly filed with publicly available court records. The evaluation provided a rare glimpse into Wagner's life and state of mind both before and after the killing occurred.
By Jocelyn Grzeszczak, The Post and Courier | Read more
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Charleston jail deputy failed to check on inmate before ‘preventable’ death, SLED finds
Charleston County detention deputy said she felt “guilty” for failing to check on an inmate in the mental health unit on the day he died last summer of severe dehydration, according to details from a SLED investigative report The Post and Courier recently received through an open-records request.
Lorenzo Trapp, 62, died at the Sheriff Al Cannon Detention Center on July 3, 2024. The lifelong Charlestonian and former city employee was being detained because he could not post a $257 bond for a June trespassing incident at a Planet Fitness on Dorchester Road.
Trapp had been homeless and suffered from mental illness and dementia, which members of the law enforcement, medical and legal communities had known about for months, if not years, court and jail records show.
At first, Trapp appeared to have died of an “apparent natural death,” according to the sheriff's office.
But an autopsy cited by the State Law Enforcement Division found Trapp died of severe dehydration. Trapp had a schizoaffective disorder, a mental health condition that combines symptoms of schizophrenia and a mood disorder. Whether SLED took any action in closing the case is unclear, but the investigative report was not forwarded to the solicitor's office.
By Kailey Cota and Alan Hovorka, The Post and Courier | Read more
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Opinion: South Carolina is too secretive about its executions. Here’s what it needs to do
South Carolina resumed executions in September after a new law survived a legal challenge. The law let the state secure more lethal injection drugs by keeping details about them secret and let inmates choose how to die by picking among three options like ordering off a menu.
Since then, our state has executed four murderers, tying it with Texas and Alabama for most in the nation over six months. It plans to execute a fifth inmate April 11, and may execute a sixth within a few months. That would be six lives extinguished in the time a pregnancy makes one.
Each execution, appeals are lodged and rejected, state workers steel themselves for something no one is born to do, witnesses watch a man take his last breath — it’s always a man, sometimes one proclaiming his innocence — and an autopsy reveals if it went as planned or terribly wrong.
By Matthew T. Hall, The State | Read more
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You’re a journalist added to a classified group chat. Here’s what you need to consider.
5 ethical questions journalists should consider if, like The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, they are added to a top-secret conversation about war plans
Given the move-fast-and-break-things mentality of the second Trump administration, Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg may not be the last journalist accidentally looped into top-secret war plans.
While nothing comes close to the jaw-dropping breach that Goldberg wrote about Monday, much lower-stakes breaches have happened in the past, and the ethical playbook is the same. Lawyers have released unredacted documents, rather than redacted versions. Officials sometimes use weak technology to redact information. Journalists have received emails intended for someone else.
We in journalism should be prepared for fresh varieties of this self-inflicted government leaking. What if, say, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. decides to plan out a national ban on antidepressants and he starts by getting input from his pals on NextDoor? Or what if the acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration convenes a brainstorm on addressing the recent spate of near misses via Instagram group chat and your mom gets an invite? Should you look over her shoulder?
No matter how ludicrous the scenario, journalists need to think through the ethical implications. Here’s a framework of questions journalists should ask themselves as they figure out what to do should they encounter another careless (or maybe it’s intentional, who knows?) release of information.
By Kelly McBride, Poynter Institute | Read more
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1 year in, what exactly did The Item Impact do?
Journalists are told to avoid writing cliches. But, when we came up with the name for this free monthly paper, we couldn't help ourselves.
Our mission in its inception was, quite literally, to make an impact in the community. To dive deeper.
The Item Impact was born from a want to strengthen bonds, inform readers and paint a fuller picture of what Sumter really is. To get into all its nooks and crannies. Yes, to be more informed. But also to maybe even learn something fascinating, to come away thinking, I didn't realize that about this person or place. To, say it with me, feel impacted by what you read.
Like flipping the plastic pages of a childhood photo album (how many of you even get that reference anymore?), let's review year one of The Item Impact.
249 STORIES STRAIGHT TO YOUR MAILBOX
We published 249 articles in the first 12 months of The Item Impact.
The beginning of the paper usually includes topic-specific roundups so that if you don't go to elected boards' public meetings, and even if you don't subscribe to The Sumter Item's main paper, you'll have the basics so you can either make decisions from there or know what you want to look into further.
Government roundups have ranged from summaries of future projects to discussions of preserving historic buildings. There were 28 articles on local election topics.
By Kayla Green, The Sumter Item | Read more
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