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As a high-stakes battle to alter its composition – and shift its statutory authority – rages at the South Carolina State House, the current iteration of the Palmetto State’s scandal-scarred Judicial Merit Selection Commission (JMSC) is preparing to screen candidates for judicial vacancies across the state.
The commission’s work will unfold under a new framework established by last year’s judicial reform law – Act 219 of 2024 – which took effect on July 1, 2025. That means the upcoming screening cycle will serve as the first real test of whether the state’s much-maligned judicial selection process is any fairer – or more transparent – under the so-called “reform.”
Given the continued dominance of influential attorneys on this panel (attorneys hand-picked by powerful lawyer-legislators), there’s little cause for optimism.
For the uninitiated, the JMSC is the powerful ten-member panel — now expanded to twelve under the new law — that screens judicial candidates before forwarding a shortlist to the S.C. General Assembly for election. It has long been dominated by lawyer-legislators and political insiders who use this opaque process to protect allies, reward donors, and ensure judicial outcomes favorable to their clients. FITSNews has covered this process for years, exposing how the state’s system — the only one in the nation where a legislatively controlled panel screens judicial candidates before a legislative vote — has led to blatant conflicts of interest, preferential treatment, and public-safety failures.
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The 2024 reform law did bring some notable changes. For the first time, the governor now has four appointments to the JMSC, slightly diluting the legislature’s monopoly over judicial selection. The law also established term limits for commissioners, raised the cap on the number of qualified candidates the panel can advance for each seat, and — in a long-overdue move — required that all public hearings be live-streamed, addressing years of complaints about the commission’s secrecy.
Judicial candidates are also now required to disclose any prior disciplinary sanctions, even private reprimands, and all judges will undergo midterm performance reviews that will feed into future re-elections.
Still, the reforms fell far short of transforming the system. Lawmakers remain firmly in control of the ultimate selection process, with no change to the legislative elections themselves. The new law also leaves magistrate judges outside of its purview, despite repeated calls to include them — a glaring omission, given their direct impact on everyday South Carolinians. While the livestream requirement and disclosure mandates are steps toward transparency, critics question whether the commission will consistently enforce these new rules or whether political influence will continue to dominate behind closed doors.
In other words, the process may look cleaner — but the same power brokers still hold the reins.
Will that change this year? As FITSNews reported just yesterday, there is major momentum to do just that as a diverse coalition of legislative leaders have united behind a proposal put forward by DOGE SC – the pro-citizen movement founded by Isle of Palms, S.C. businessman Rom Reddy.
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RELATED | DOGE SC UNVEILS JUDICIAL REFORM PLAN
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In the meantime, the currently configured JMSC is accepting public complaints and testimony about judges seeking reappointment — but citizens wishing to have their concerns heard must act quickly. The deadline to file a notarized statement is 12:00 p.m. EST on Monday, November 3, 2025. Public hearings will follow on November 17-21, 2025 and December 1-5, 2025, with the General Assembly’s judicial elections slated for March 4, 2026, according to the official schedule published by the S.C. State House.
Want to participate? The procedure remains straightforward but formal. Anyone hoping to testify or file a complaint against a judge must submit a notarized statement describing the specific allegations concerning the judge’s character, competency, or ethics. These complaints must be received by the JMSC no later than noon on November 3, 2025. Statements should be mailed or hand-delivered to:
Erin B. Crawford, Chief Counsel
104 Gressette Building
Post Office Box 142
Columbia, SC 29202
Filing a notarized complaint is also the first step in being approved to speak during the public hearings later this fall. Once submitted, the JMSC’s staff and screening attorneys review each filing before deciding whether to invite additional public testimony.
While the new livestream requirement represents progress, the broader process remains opaque. The commission’s investigative work and deliberations are still conducted behind closed doors, and its recommendations carry enormous weight once they reach the floor of the General Assembly — where political deal-making, endorsements, and back-room bargaining often determine who ultimately wears the robe.
The stakes are high. South Carolina’s judiciary has been widely criticized as an extension of the legislature rather than an independent branch of government — a system that has repeatedly produced outcomes favoring insiders over victims, defendants over public safety, and politics over justice. Reform advocates argue that unless lawmakers relinquish their control over judicial selection entirely, the Palmetto State will continue to suffer from a judiciary compromised by political loyalty instead of guided by impartiality and integrity.
This year’s hearings will reveal whether the latest “fix” truly makes a difference — or merely paints over a system that remains structurally flawed. For those who believe in transparency and accountability, the message is clear: Now is the time to act.
Anyone with credible concerns about a judge’s conduct or performance should submit their statement to the JMSC before the deadline and — as FITSNews has urged in the past — consider copying our newsroom to ensure that transparency extends beyond the marble walls of the State House.
Send materials to:
FITSNews
Post Office Box 3642
Irmo, S.C. 29063
FITSNews will once again be attending and covering as many of the hearings as possible — continuing our commitment to exposing South Carolina’s secretive judicial machinery and pressing for genuine reform in the only state where lawmakers still pick the judges who interpret their laws.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
As a private investigator turned journalist, Jenn Wood brings a unique skill set to FITSNews as its research director. Known for her meticulous sourcing and victim-centered approach, she helps shape the newsroom’s most complex investigative stories while producing the FITSFiles and Cheer Incorporated podcasts. Jenn lives in South Carolina with her family, where her work continues to spotlight truth, accountability, and justice.
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10 comments
Jenn Wood and Will Folks, you talk the talk; now walk the walk.
Will you publish my complaint, God willing, against the candidacy of John Cannon Few?
Of course you will not SIMPLY BECASUE you are mad that Jay Lucas, a former lawyer legislator, is running against John Few.
Will you ask SC JMSC to accept testimony by Web-Ex or Zoom or anything similar from complainants who cannot travel to Columbia or, heck, who cannot find handicapped parking spaces anywhere near the SC JMSC hearing room?
Of course you will not SIMPLY BECASUE you want to be able to pretend that you are the only media outlet covering the hearings and do not want people getting testimony directly.
Will you even investigate the cause of death of Andy Fiffick, IV (most likely suicide), who received a visit from Jean Toal in October 2023 just as I was handing in updates of my complaints against her, John Kittredge, and Michael Holt?
Of course you will not because what is behind Fiffick’s likely suicide could be too big for you to touch even as you feign courage, independence, etc.
Will even ask how Michael Holt was screened out as “in excellent physical health” when he reportedly died of advanced cancer few months later?
Of course you not SIMPLY BECAUSE you want nothing to distract from your was against CERTAIN lawyers legislators when YOU KNOW that the bigger problem are the so-called “Citizens’ Screening Committee[s]” which are composed ENTIRELY of lawyers who do business with the candidates they screen; but NO ONE KNOWS how those members are chosen or how long they serve.
Will you even ask the SC JMSC staff to accept by email supporting documents to complaints instead of putting on the complainants the time, physical, and financial, burdens of making paper copies and delivering them to SC JMSC?
Of course you will not SIMPLY BECAUSE you want to perpetuate an image of yourselves as the defenders of the weak when, in reality, you pick up only those “causes” which pass your calculus of profit and revenge.
Will you even ask SC JMSC why D. Craig Brown of Florence stepped down quietly and unexpectedly few months after his reelection?
Of course you will not SIMPLY BECAUSE you already know and do not dare speak.
Will you even let this comment of mine through?
We shall, God willing, see.
You’re kind of a loon.
Indeed Seen her rants before
Rebecca Shields Top Fan, here (for your easy access) is my reply to your brother/sister/cousin AC Top Fan. I hope you continue reading my “rants” and that, God willing, some day you shall understand the logic, experience, and OBJECTIVE facts, supporting them and that YOU never become a victim of a judge who does not understand/does not accept that a judge has no judicial power unless a case or controversy is properly before him/her:
Worse than a judge who lies about the facts of a case is a judge who lies JUST BECAUSE he saw another judge (the first judge does not even like) do so. And worse than both is a judge who lies just to protect a prosecutor who did and recruited others to do so. But worse than all three is a judge who does not know the most fundamental basis of judicial power: the existence of a case or controversy between/among parties within that judge’s court’s jurisdiction.
John Cannon Few is all four of those judges rolled into one and worse.
Putting it in terms even “loons” could understand:
A judge (whether elected, appointed, or even divinely-anointed) cannot just wake up one morning, don his/her robe, grab his/her gavel, walk the street, and stop Mr./Ms. AC (Top Fan) out of the blue and ORDER him/her to pay Mr. Ceiling Fan a million dollars just because it struck the elected-appointed-or-divinely-anointed judge’s fancy to do so.
A case or controversy between Mr. Ceiling Fan and Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan had to have existed within the judge-in-question’s subject matter jurisdiction and that judge-in-question’s court would have had to have acquired personal jurisdiction over Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan.
Mr. Ceiling Fan would have had to have sued Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan in a court with subject-matter jurisdiction (meaning, for example, Mr. Ceiling Fan could not have sued Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan in divorce court in Texas for not having paid Mr. Ceiling Fan for painting a house in North Carolina) and with personal jurisdiction over both sides (meaning Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan would have had to have lived and/or done business in the North Carolina location where that house was/was-not in fact painted, to have received Mr. Ceiling Fan’s law suit (“properly served with the complaint” in legal parlance) and appeared before the elected-appointed-or-divinely-anointed judge-in-question to say, for example, “I never went to North Carolina or met Mr. Ceiling Fan” or “I already paid Mr. Ceiling Fan two-million dollars for a paint job worth only a thousand dollars” or any other defense or to not have answered within the time allowed in the law suit.
Likewise, the elected-appointed-or-divinely-appointed judge-in-question could not, while walking that street, strike Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan on the head with the gavel, call police to take Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan to prison and keep him/her there for six months without jury trial because the judge-in-question thinks that parting one’s hair the wrong way “degrades the moral authority of the courts.”
There has to have been a law that says in North Carolina people must part their hair to the right, not to the left; that law must have been passed by North Carolina’s legislature and signed by North Carolina’s governor, and (if challenged) found constitutional a federal court in North Carolina.
And even if that law existed, Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan would have had to have the mental capacity to know right from left LITERALLY and to have been proven to have parted his/her hair the wrong way WITH THE PURPOSE of “degrading the moral authority” of the court of the judge in question.
Again, IN THAT EXAMPLE, John Cannon Few is the Texas divorce-court judge who walked North Carolina streets, struck Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan on the head with a gavel for violating the hair-parting law, EVEN THOUGH Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan is bald with not one hair remaining after chemo-therapy and does not own a wig.
If you understood the example, let me tell you the reality which is documented by South Carolina court transcripts and exhibits which John Few and his four colleagues keep from public view.
For that, I need to know that this pre-amble to my reply to you gets through, God so willing and FITS permitting.
You need to vee locked up, fool
Never underestimate what you think you know when you are oblivious. All the gizmos don’t even show you what you think you see or have hacked.
So what are your complaints against Few? And what about the others you named? Or are you just another loon
AC (Top Fan):
Worse than a judge who lies about the facts of a case is a judge who lies JUST BECAUSE he saw another judge (the first judge does not even like) do so. And worse than both is a judge who lies just to protect a prosecutor who did and recruited others to do so. But worse than all three is a judge who does not know the most fundamental basis of judicial power: the existence of a case or controversy between/among parties within that judge’s court’s jurisdiction.
John Cannon Few is all four of those judges rolled into one and worse.
Putting it in terms even “loons” could understand:
A judge (whether elected, appointed, or even divinely-anointed) cannot just wake up one morning, don his/her robe, grab his/her gavel, walk the street, and stop Mr./Ms. AC (Top Fan) out of the blue and ORDER him/her to pay Mr. Ceiling Fan a million dollars just because it struck the elected-appointed-or-divinely-anointed judge’s fancy to do so.
A case or controversy between Mr. Ceiling Fan and Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan had to have existed within the judge-in-question’s subject matter jurisdiction and that judge-in-question’s court would have had to have acquired personal jurisdiction over Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan.
Mr. Ceiling Fan would have had to have sued Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan in a court with subject-matter jurisdiction (meaning, for example, Mr. Ceiling Fan could not have sued Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan in divorce court in Texas for not having paid Mr. Ceiling Fan for painting a house in North Carolina) and with personal jurisdiction over both sides (meaning Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan would have had to have lived and/or done business in the North Carolina location where that house was/was-not in fact painted, to have received Mr. Ceiling Fan’s law suit (“properly served with the complaint” in legal parlance) and appeared before the elected-appointed-or-divinely-anointed judge-in-question to say, for example, “I never went to North Carolina or met Mr. Ceiling Fan” or “I already paid Mr. Ceiling Fan two-million dollars for a paint job worth only a thousand dollars” or any other defense or to not have answered within the time allowed in the law suit.
Likewise, the elected-appointed-or-divinely-appointed judge-in-question could not, while walking that street, strike Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan on the head with the gavel, call police to take Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan to prison and keep him/her there for six months without jury trial because the judge-in-question thinks that parting one’s hair the wrong way “degrades the moral authority of the courts.”
There has to have been a law that says in North Carolina people must part their hair to the right, not to the left; that law must have been passed by North Carolina’s legislature and signed by North Carolina’s governor, and (if challenged) found constitutional a federal court in North Carolina.
And even if that law existed, Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan would have had to have the mental capacity to know right from left LITERALLY and to have been proven to have parted his/her hair the wrong way WITH THE PURPOSE of “degrading the moral authority” of the court of the judge in question.
Again, IN THAT EXAMPLE, John Cannon Few is the Texas divorce-court judge who walked North Carolina streets, struck Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan on the head with a gavel for violating the hair-parting law, EVEN THOUGH Mr./Ms. AC Top Fan is bald with not one hair remaining after chemo-therapy and does not own a wig.
If you understood the example, let me tell you the reality which is documented by South Carolina court transcripts and exhibits which John Few and his four colleagues keep from public view.
For that, I need to know that this pre-amble to my reply to you gets through, God so willing and FITS permitting.
BTW, while you are on that feigned judicial-transparency kick, can you find out why FOR THE THIRD WEEK IN A ROW your SC Supreme Court has NOT posted the weekly advance sheets.
Is that related somehow to the upcoming judicial elections? Or to the Rasputin of the SC courts Daniel Edward Shearouse continuing to pull the strings behind the scenes even though a white woman is now SUPPOSEDLY the Clerk of SC’s supreme court and a woman is SUPPOSEDLY the Director of SC Court Administration?
Rasputin Shearouse SUPPOSEDLY retired as SC supreme court clerk but continued to work there for an hourly salary he pretended UNDER OATH he does not know.
Then, Rasputin Shearouse was appointed as Director of SC Court Administration WITHOUT ADVERTIZING or COMPETITIVE APPLICATION. After I pointed that out in a complaint about Kittredge’s nepotism, a woman was named Director of SC Court Administration though the same announcement said that Shearouse will stay as “Interim Director” for an indefinite period SUPPOSEDLY to break the new Director in even though Rasputin Shearouse has had no REAL FORMAL experience himself directing SC court administration.
And while you are at it, can you (or will you) FOIA Shearouse’s payments from POSSIBLE double or even triple office holding? Or is Rasputin of SC’s courts pulling YOUR strings, too? After all, your outlet has been sued and is now being sued my none other than Mark (“The Tiger”) Tinsley.
We shall, God willing, see.
Kash Patel was sent records. Not wise for spying eyes to spy and hack anymore.
I wish to, God willing and FITS permitting, continue my detailed proof of why BOTH John Cannon Few and Blake Hewitt should withdraw from the race for that SC Supreme Court seat this November 2025 to February/March 2026.
But people do not care what you know until they know you care. That is why I paste here this explanation of why I care.
A totally NON-POLITICAL show I appreciate on NPR is Hidden Brain, a show which cites published PEER-REVIEWD pioneering research on how the human brain works and interviews the authors of those published SCIENTIFIC papers and/or books.
At the threshold, BIOLOGICAL PLAUSIBILITY is a totally separate concept in medical and epidemiological research from intuitiveness. Please accept that for now OR allow me to explain the difference later.
But some scientific research comes out with COUNTER-INTUITIVE results which, if methodologically sound AND biologically plausible, must be accepted and respected.
One of those counter-intuitive results is that the human brain views the “future you” as a foreign person to, not an extension of, the “present you.” That is why it is VERY difficult for the “present you” to make decisions costly to the “present you” but VERY beneficial to the “future you,” who is a foreign person to your brain.
For example, the “present you” sees no reason to give up the pleasure of smoking that cigarette (if pleasure there really is beyond mere habit) for the benefit of preventing that foreign “future you” from getting lung cancer.
But God in His wisdom (or Nature in its wisdom if you are atheist) blessed humanity with the Bell Curve which has extremes on both ends. of intelligence and imbecility, of good and evil, of strength and weakness, of love and hatred, etc.
For now, please accept that I am on the extreme of foresight and creativity and ask the “present you” to forgo the pleasure of insulting me in return for the benefit of the “future you” profiting from my ideas.
And what I am LOVINGLY but forcefully saying in all my Murdaugh-related and SC-Judiciary-related posts is that the legal system built for the pleasure of the “present you” (lawyers, prosecutors, judges, clerks, etc.) is so rotten and unscientific it will come back to bite the “future you” and the “future your children and grandchildren.”
When the Bible tells us that God exacts redemption for “the sins of the fathers” on the children to the third generation and the fourth generation (it does not clarify whether that is concurrent or consecutive) it does NOT depict a vindictive God or some magic or superstitious. It does warn that the systems you build today will affect you and your children and grandchildren tomorrow and the day thereafter.
So, not only the founding generations of Murdaughs, but ALL prosecutors, built a system with vast prosecutorial powers AND the winked-at practice of malicious prosecutions to gain unfair advantages in family-court and/or civil-court litigation, came back to bite Richard Alexander Murdaugh (“RAM”) and will come back to bite the children and grandchildren of judges who pander to prosecutors when the pandering judges are no longer in power.
For the sake of the “future you” and yours, please deny the “present you” the pleasure of insulting me but, instead, take what I write in my spirit of love and foresight.