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by WILL FOLKS
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South Carolina chief justice John Kittredge insisted his legislatively neutered branch of government was “under attack” during a speech to the S.C. Defense Trial Attorneys Association (SCDTAA) in Savannah, Georgia last week.
According to multiple event attendees, Kittredge – who succeeded liberal ex-lawmaker Donald Beatty as chief justice on July 31, 2024 – aggressively defended the reputation of the Palmetto State’s embattled judiciary during remarks to this influential group of civil defense attorneys at the swanky Savannah Harbor Westin.
Kittredge, 69, of Greenville, S.C. has done little to move the needle when it comes to affirming the integrity – or reasserting the independence – of his branch of government. That’s not entirely his fault, though, considering powerful lawyer-legislators in the S.C. General Assembly – the state’s omnipotent legislative branch – controversially pick which judges are appointed (and reappointed), set their salaries and control their office budgets.
Oh, and endeavor to take them out whenever they step out of line…
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RELATED | MOMENTUM GROWS FOR JUDICIAL REFORM
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Fixing this system has become the dominant political issue in the Palmetto State… but the escalation of public pressure appears to be rubbing Kittrege the wrong way.
Attendees at the event found his remarks about justices being “under attack” off-putting – saying he was complaining about criticism over judicial selection while at the same time essentially enabling one of the most corrupt institutional rackets in the entire nation.
As FITSNews has extensively and exclusively reported via our ‘Toxic Justice‘ series, the Palmetto State’s asbestos racket – run by another former chief justice, Jean Toal – is one of the most opaque, incestuous, unfairly rigged dockets in the country, recently earning the No. 3 ranking on a nationwide list of “judicial hellholes.”
Toal, incidentally, is continuing to “preside” over this docket even though she’s more than a decade past the Palmetto State’s mandatory retirement age for judges, another issue which has raised questions about the integrity of Kittredge’s branch of government.
“Kittredge presides over a special supreme court-sanctioned docket that is number three on the national hell-hole list,” one attorney who attended this weekend’s event told FITSNews. “He is allowing former chief justice Toal (who is a decade past the mandatory retirement age) to run the docket and self deal to her former law clerk and former law partner.”
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While Kittredge’s defenders insisted his “under attack” comment referred to legislative attempts to take out justices – most notably associate justice John Few in February’s judicial races – they admitted Toal’s asbestos docket remains a blind spot for the chief justice.
One that will cloud perceptions of his branch of government until it is addressed…
“He can’t say we’re being unfairly attacked while keeping Jean Toal in place,” one attorney told us.
Sadly, as our ‘Toxic Justice’ reporting has revealed, the preservation of Toal’s judicial hellhole is primarily the fault of the legislative branch – including House speaker Murrell Smith, a powerful legislative leader whose law firm is reaping millions of dollars from the racket.
Not only did Smith fail to advance meaningful judicial reform during the last session of the legislature, he actually carved out an exemption for Toal’s asbestos docket – literally safeguarding his law firm’s profit stream.
Until corruption like that changes, nothing will truly change in South Carolina’s “Injustice” system… which means criticism of the judiciary will not only continue, but continue to be well-founded.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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9 comments
The Judiciary is hardly under attack. It is and always has been a good ole boy system.
The judiciary should be under SCIENTIFIC attack because it promotes MAGICAL THINKING (which includes belief that judges have magical powers to know what is reasonable and what it unreasonable and that they pass those MAGICAL POWERS by figuratively laying their hands on selected lawyers, mainly prosecutors.
And some of the prosecutors on whom South Carolina’s supreme court figuratively laid their magical-powers-transmitting hands include those who gave this state and this county the travesty of Richard Alexander Murdaugh’s (“RAM”) two-murder FALSE conviction.
But thank God, (1) I survived the most recent episode (few minutes ago) of my numerous-false-arrests-caused angina, which episode caused me to wake up with chest pain a couple of hours ago; (2) my vision is not too blurry to post this or to review selected parts of the official transcript; and (3) THE OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT of RAM’s two-murder trial is now available in digital (meaning word searchable format) on C-Track on South Carolina’s Judicial Branch’s website.
My preliminary review of excerpts CONFIRMS my assertion that Paul and Maggie COULD NOT HAVE BEEN SHOT as early as only 22 minutes after their KNOWN large, and relatively fatty, last meal.
It also CONFIRMS that the Prosecution KNEW IT and did everything possible to distract from that exonerating fact:
FIRST, Creighton Waters peremptorily struck an otherwise-qualified juror SOLELY BECAUSE he is a pathologist.
OFFICIAL TANSCRIPT pp 403-404:
[19-20] THE COURT: Thank you, sir. Just wanted to confirm since I saw you hesitated to get up.
[21] THE JUROR: Oh, I’m fine.
[22] THE COURT: But you sound good to me.
[23-24] THE JUROR: I work full-time at the hospital as a pathologist, so I’m fine.
[25 to page 404, line 2] THE COURT: Oh, okay, good. Thank you, sir. You can go back and stand right where you — in front of the bench and we’ll see —
[3] THE JUROR: Back there with those people?
[4-5] THE COURT: No. Right in front there by the clerk. He’ll show you.
[6] THE JUROR: Oh, okay. Thank you. Okay.
[7] THE COURT: He’s good to go.
[8-9] (All parties returned to the courtroom. Jury selection continued.)
[10] THE CLERK: What say you for the State?
[11] MR. WATERS: Please excuse the juror from this case.
[12-13] THE CLERK: Juror 22, you can have a seat back with the panel.
[14] Juror 729. What say you for the State?
[15] MR. WATERS: Please present this juror.
[16] THE CLERK: What say you for the defendant?
[17] MR. HARPOOTLIAN: Swear this juror.
[18] THE CLERK: Have a seat to your right.
[19] Juror 864. What say you for the State?
[20] MR. WATERS: Please present this juror.
[21] THE CLERK: What say you for the defendant?
[22] MR. HARPOOTLIAN: Please swear the juror.
[23-25] THE CLERK: If you will have a seat to your right, please. Your Honor, that’s your twelve.
NEXT and ETCETERA, please stay tuned to, God willing and FITS permitting, my future posts.
Drunk driving Jean Toal still at it?
I am a member of the SCDTAA and was present during Chief Justice Kittredge’s “State of the Judiciary” presentation at the Annual Meeting. Several points need to be made in response to this misleading and incomplete representation of Kittredge’s remarks. It should be noted that Justice Kittredge was invited by the organization to update it on the state of the judiciary and that he graciously accepted the invitation to update the group on the accomplishments of, and challenges facing, the judiciary. The majority of his excellent presentation focused on the accomplishments of the judiciary and court system over the past year, including highlighting shifts in how the criminal and civil dockets, both jury and nonjury, are being managed. Our state judges are faced with the extraordinary task of managing an extremely heavy civil and criminal docket. Under Justice Kittredge’s leadership, the administrative judges and clerks of court across the state have adjusted the allocation of weeks of court- whether it be guilty pleas, nonjury civil, or criminal trials- in order to more efficiently move the respective dockets to allow the parties and their attorneys to more expeditiously litigate their cases. This is working. Motions are being heard more quickly. Cases are moving from point A to point Z in less time.
It bears reminding that our judges are civil servants. Many of our sitting judges left lucrative private practices to serve the citizenry of South Carolina. Our judges work hard- very hard. And they work well. Collectively, they are an extraordinary group of not only jurists, but people. They are not perfect. They will not, individually, get it “right” every time. But as a litigator who has appeared in courts across the state for over two decades, I can tell your readers that they certainly try to get it “right,” and consistently do so with integrity and civility. We have great judges in South Carolina- from the family bench to the justices sitting on the Supreme Court. The state bar, as a whole, and certainly the SCDTAA, holds our judiciary in extremely high regard. That respect is deserved.
Turning to Justice Kittredge’s comment that the judiciary is “under attack,” while this was not the focus of his remarks at the annual meeting, his statement is supported by press coverage, including on this site. However, I believe that his statements were also somewhat mischaracterized in this article. Justice Kittredge did not appear to me to be specifically addressing the judicial selection process when he spoke of an attack on the judiciary. Even if he was speaking of an attack on the court associated with judicial selection, that seems to be a fair position. Of course, the judiciary has no control over how they are elected- that is driven by statute. The court does not, and cannot, control that.
I also reject the assertion in the article that Justice Kittredge has done little to move the needle when it comes to affirming the integrity- or reasserting the independence- of [the judiciary]. Justice Kittredge is the manifestation of integrity. Ten minutes in his presence establishes this. The judges who serve with him, as a collective, are high character, high integrity jurists who are dedicated to justice and its efficient delivery.
Remember that judges are not able to fend off attacks on their own. They are heavily restricted in what they can say, particularly in public. Thus, it is incumbent upon others to speak up on their behalf and to remind the public- those who do not have routine exposure to the courts- of the hard work that they are doing on behalf of the people.
I invite anyone who wishes to disparage our judges or to impugn their character or integrity to spend a week in court observing our circuit judges, particularly during a civil nonjury or criminal plea week. I am confident that you will leave with a new appreciation for our excellent state judges.
I hope you agree that, in English, rhyme is cheaper and less musical than alliterations, specially when they are as brilliant as mine including my latest branding of judges who do not apply TRUE science as “magic mongering men” or MMM.
And proof comes from MMM’s routinely basically “instructing” jurors to go state at witnesses and the jury shall MAGICALLY discern the truth-bearer from the liar.
For more on why the system must be SCIENTIFICALLY challenged instead of worshipping laws made by MMM, first praise God I stayed alive and y’all stayed tuned for the second proof that the Prosecution KNEW that Paul and Maggie had together a dinner of the same contents, which dinner ended at 8:30 pm on 7 June 2021.
That proof is again from THE OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT of RAM’s two-murder trial, which transcript is available on C-Track and shows, at page 432, lines 9-22, Creighton Waters telling the jury:
I told you that you’re going to hear evidence that Maggie did not like being in Moselle as much as she liked Edisto, the beach house, but that on June 7, 2021, she came back to Moselle. And the evidence is going to show that she arrived about 8:15, and the evidence is going to show that — from the cell phones that Paul was there at the house, at the main house, and Alex Murdaugh himself says that they ate dinner. And the autopsy is going to reflect both Paul and Maggie having similar stomach contents, indicating that they recently shared a meal together.
About 8:30, like 15 minutes after they arrived, Paul’s phone starts moving towards the kennels.
Please pray for my continued survival from this angina and stay tuned for more exculpatory excerpts, God so willing and FITS permitting.
Oop! MMM is already taken for Malicious Mandy Matney.
But no worries: Magic Mongering Men and Women (“MMM&W”) works even better for jurists of both genders who not only ignore, but even disdain, TRUE science.
Before, God so willing, I proceed to the clincher of the Prosecution KNOWING the relationship between the last meal and the more precise timing of death, I destroy the Prosecution’s unfairly in the media (before, during, AND after trial) ridiculing the Defense’s two-shooter theory as some midget vigilantes who rode by Moselle hoping to find guns lying around.
I often wrote my REASONABLE conclusion that Maggie was shot with Paul’s PREVIOUSLY-STOLEN $8K gun.
Think of it: what would someone do with such an expensive gun? Resell or re-paint it and use it. So, the REAL SHOOTER could be the thief of Paul’s stolen gun OR have could have bought it from the real thief.
NOTHING impossible, implausible, or irrational about either possibility.
Now notice what the Prosecution’s own expert admitted at page 353, lines 12-17, OF THE OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT under oath but after considerable obfuscation:
A Based on my examination, those are the marks that I was able to conclude that matched. When I looked at the totality of that cartridge, that fired cartridge case, excuse me, to look at the firing pin or breach face marks, I was unable to determine that — if it was fired by the Item 33 rifle, or by another rifle that was similar.
Noticed “or by another rifle that was similar”?
The expensive guns Richard Alexander Murdaugh (“RAM”) bought for Paul and Buster were IDENTICAL but for the color. Paul’s was stolen, replaced, and the replacement, too, stolen. But Buster’s gun, which was often “borrowed” by Paul (after losing TWO SIMILAR guns) and friends, was staying put and minding its own business in the Moselle gun room on 7 June 2021.
That Buster’s rifle is the rifle taken from the Moselle gun room by the investigators and labeled State Exhibit 33.
Prove me wrong if you can.
Had this judiciary which complains of being under attack, it could have saved the State much shame and treasure and spared wrongly-prosecuted people much suffering, had that judiciary insisted that SUBSTANTIVE due process includes all available methods to precisely time all unwitnessed murders.
Please read on with an open mind.
Dr. Ellen Riemer spoke of Paul and Maggie’s stomach contents in milliliters, which due to the specific gravity OF WATER being 1, converts to grams OF THE SAME NUMBER. One cc of water is one milliliter of water and weighs one gram.
Now that the OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT of Richard Alexander Murdaugh’s (“RAM”) two-murder trial is out, I comfortably confirm what I have been asserting for almost three years now: the food in Paul and Maggie’s stomachs at autopsy was too little and too digested for them to have died ONLY 22 MINUTES after their KNOWN large, and relatively fatty, last meal.
Although no stomach contents photos were apparently entered at trial, Dr. Riemer’s testimony leads to ONLY ONE SCIENTIFICALLY-BASED conclusion: Paul and Maggie died around 9:30 pm, NOT as early as 8:44 pm, on 7 June 2021.
And here is Dr. Riemer’s testimony on direct examination by Creighton Waters in the State’s case-in-chief:
[Page 3381, lines 10-11] Q Did both Maggie and Paul, did you make any observations about their stomach contents?
[12-21] A Yes. So part of the autopsy, I’m not just looking at the wounds. I’m examining all of the internal organs, and when I — this is how I knew it went through the pancreas and the kidney. Because, remember, I’m not just looking outside of the body. I have to — I do everything, look at all of the internal organs and dissect each one. And it — when examining the stomach it’s — I will document the contents of the stomach, and they each had a lot of recently digested food fragments. So, you know, there was a — they had a full stomach of food.
[22 Q And were those stomach contents consistent with one another?
[24 to page 3382, line ] A Yeah, they looked identical to each other. They were kind of gray/tan, you know. I couldn’t tell exactly what it was, but it may have included meat. I didn’t see any corn or, you know, green beans or anything like that. But whatever it was, they were identical to each other. And I believe she had 600 MLs, which is, like, it’s — 450 MLs is a pound, so it’s like almost one and a half pounds of food. And he had 500 MLs, which is a little bit more than a pound. But they looked similar like they may have shared a meal together.
Those 500 or 600 ccs of “tan/gray” “couldn’t tell exactly what it was” is LIKELY half coffee because they had high caffeine in their toxicology report but is definitely TOO DIGESTED for the first 22 minutes after the last meal.
The Prosecution knew it but counted on the Defense to miss it. The Defense continues to ignore that part, either out of embarrassment for having missed it ab initio OR out the local legal “profession’s” obsession with discrediting me even if it means leaving their client rotting in a wrongful incarceration.
Next, God so willing and FITS permitting, I shall quote a part from Blanca Simpson’s testimony which proves the Prosecution was keen on blind-siding the Defense about the REAL time of death.
The wrongly convicted/wrongly prosecuted are the ones most deserving of SC’s Chief Justice’s sympathy.
This excerpt of John Meadors’ examination of Blanca Simpson shows: (1) Richard Alexander Murdaugh’s (“RAM”) long kaki pants, which he wore to work on 7 June 2021 and had them on while riding around Moselle for a couple of hours after returning from work (see the snapchat video of the shrub that kept cantilevering) were left in the laundry room when RAM took them off before or after dinner and changed into the white T and green shorts; and (2) Blanca had made meat and corn and rice for Paul but the pathologist could not see any, meaning Paul lived long enough (at least an hour) after dinner for the corn to clear his stomach.
After this, nobody buy Blanca’s book soaked with the blood of the innocent, and no one tell me RAM is guilty.
[Page 2978, lines 15-16] Q Now, Ms. Maggie had asked you to fix dinner for the family. Did you do that?
[17] A I did.
[18] Q Can you tell them what you made?
[19] A She called it steak burger, but’s cubed steak and gravy, some white rise, and some green beans.
[21] Q You’re a good cook, aren’t you?
[22] A Yes, sir.
[23-24] Q Did you see or talk to Maggie ever again after those texts or those phone calls?
[25 to page 2978, line 4] A Before I left Moselle, I texted her and I said the dinner was on — I believe I texted to the effect that I left dinner on the stove for them. And — I can’t really remember the text, but I did text her and let her know that dinner was ready and that I was leaving.
[5-6] Q And you said one of her phrases she used is no worries. Had she said that to you that day?
[7] A Yes.
[8] Q When was that? It doesn’t matter.
[9] A I can’t remember.
[10] Q You’ve got a family of your own, right?
[11] A Yes, sir.
[12] Q Did you — when you left Moselle, what did you do?
[13] A Picked up my son at school.
[14] Q All right, and your husband is working?
[15] A Yes, sir.
[16] Q Law enforcement?
[17] A Yes, sir.
[18-19] Q Okay, and when you got home that night, did anybody call you that night?
[20] A No.
[21-22] Q Okay. When did you hear about the murder at Moselle of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh?
[23-24] A The next morning when I was getting ready to go out there.
[25] Q The next morning?
[Page 2979, line 1] A Yes, sir.
[2] Q Okay. How did you hear?
[3] A Alex called me.
[4-5] Q And what did he tell you? He called you the next morning?
[6] A He called me early the next morning.
[7] Q And what did he say to you?
[8-12] A He — he sounded shaky on the phone. You could tell he was — his voice sounded really shaky, and he said B, they’re gone, they’re gone. And my initial thought was did she go back to Edisto? I — that thought didn’t cross my mind that he meant that they were dead at that time.
[13] Q You just didn’t comprehend what was going on.
[14-17] A No, sir, I did not. So, he told me again. He said, he said no, B. They’re dead. And at that point I don’t remember because I believe I dropped the phone. My husband grabbed the phone and I don’t remember after that.
[18] Q You literally dropped the phone.
[19] A Yes.
[20] Q And did your husband get on the phone?
[21] A I don’t remember.
[22] Q Okay.
[23 to page 2980, line 1] A I don’t remember. I don’t remember. I — all I remember is when he said that they were dead. I dropped the phone. And I believe I said “I’ll be right over, I’ll be right over, but —
[2-3] Q Did he, the defendant, Alex Murdaugh, tell you which way to go when you got to the house?
[4-13] A He said him and Buster were at Almeda, so I told him he was going to Almeda. You know, I wanted to make sure they were okay, so I went from my house to Almeda. And then when I got ready to leave Almeda, he said, well, when you go to the house, go in the front because there’s a lot of SLED agents by the kennels. You can’t go in that way. And he said just try to straighten up the way Maggie liked everything, you know, in the house. He said you knew her the best, so you know how she liked stuff. So, I did. I went to the house.
[14] Q So, you went to —
[15] A I went to Moselle.
[16] Q You went to Almeda to start with?
[17] A Yes, I did, to check on Buster and Alex.
[18] Q Okay. To comfort them.
[19] A Yes, sir.
[20-21] Q Okay, and at his request, you went to Moselle to start cleaning up and getting the house in order?
[22 to page 2981, line 1] A Yes, sir. He said there was going to be people probably stopping by and bringing food and stuff. He said I just want the house to look the way Maggie would like for it to look. So I said okay, and I went to the house and then —
[2-3] Q Did you have a usual way that you went into Moselle entrance wise?
[4-10] A From the house I would — if I was coming from my house, I would come in on the — I called it the Mylie’s side. So, I would actually enter the property through the kennels, and if I was coming from Hampton or if I — you know, the other direction, then I would use the front entrance. But normally I used the kennel entrance coming from my house.
[11-12] Q When you got to Moselle — we’re now in the morning of June 8th, right, of 2021?
[13] A Yes, sir.
[14-15] Q Okay. Did you see anybody in the property before you got to the main house?
[16] A No, sir.
[17-19] Q And when you got to the main house, take us right there, Blanca. Right now as you’re walking right in the house, what were your observations?
[20-23] A It was hard because I know she wasn’t going to be coming back. And I didn’t want to move — I didn’t want to move her stuff. It was just a weird feeling going through when I unlocked the front door to get in. It felt cold.
[24] Q You really cared for her, didn’t you?
[25] A I did.
[Page 2982, line 1] Q What did you do when you got inside?
[2 to page 2983, line 2] A When I got inside, I didn’t turn on any lights; I didn’t do anything. I walked — I walked through the front door and I went in the kitchen, and I was kind of — I was kind of — when I looked in the kitchen, I kind of just stopped in my tracks and I looked at the stove, and then I was kind of — I don’t know what the word is. When I looked and I noticed the stove, that there was no pots on the stove, it was kind of unusual because usually when they ate dinner — when they ate dinner the night before, the pots usually stayed on the stove. Very, very seldom would she put, you know, certain meals in the refrigerator. A lot times it was just left on the stove until the next day. And the pots were not — they were not in the sink and they were not on the stove. And then as I walked through, I walked — if you walked through the kitchen like you’re going to — from the kitchen — if you walked through the kitchen, if you go to the left there’s two — a freezer and a refrigerator, and the laundry room sat right there to the — there’s a backdoor to the back porch, and then there’s a — the laundry room door. They’re both right there. And as I turned to go to the laundry room, I noticed that there was — her pajamas were in the middle of the doorway right in the middle, laid neatly in the middle of doorway going into the laundry room. It was her pajama pants, a pair of underwear, and her pajama top.
[3] Q Was that unusual?
[4] A That was very unusual.
[5] Q Why?
[6-8] A Because she would — she wouldn’t lay her clothes out like that, not in the middle of the door like that. It just didn’t look right to me.
[9] Q And you took care of the house?
[10] A Yes.
[11] Q And you took care of the clothes?
[12] A Yes.
[13-15] Q And not to get too personal but sometime you can’t help it. Were the underwear there with the pajamas unusual?
[16] A Yes.
[17] Q Why?
[18] A She didn’t wear underwear with her pajamas.
[19] Q No underwear with the pajamas, but that struck —
[20] A No underclothes with the pajamas.
[21-22] Q But that struck you as unusual they were there with the pajamas?
[23-24] A Yes, sir, because the underwear appeared to be clean, not dirty. They still had, like, fold marks.
[25 to page 2984, line 1] Q And the pots, and I may have just missed it. You said — where would the pots end up when you found them?
[2-9] A After I looked at the pajamas on the floor the way that they were set, I turned around and I said, well, I wonder where the pots are. So, I happened to — I opened the refrigerator door, and the pots were sitting inside the refrigerator with lids on them, and I was, like, you know, who did this? I don’t know at that point, but that was not normal for the pots — the whole pot to be sitting in the fridge.
[10-11] Q Did you make any other observations in the house, the bathroom, or anywhere else?
[12 to page 2985, line 1] A In the master bathroom was — her clothes were sitting next to the tub. It was a small pile of clothes right there next to the tub. And by the shower — if you walk in the master bedroom, there is a big garden tub, spa type tub, and then right here is the shower, and there’s a window. On the floor next to the shower was a slight puddle of water, a towel, and a pair of khaki pants. And then as I went to the left to see if there was anything else that was out, I looked in the closet, and in the closet was a white, damp towel on the floor, and there was a — I’m pretty sure the t-shirt was white at one time, but, you know, they get kind of dingy after a few years. But it appeared that a t-shirt had fallen off a stack of t-shirts that were on top of the shelf right there in the closet. It was laying on the floor next to the tub.
[2-5] Q When you took care of the home, was that — tell us how the clothes were laid out, the shirts, the shorts. Were you saying up on a shelf, were the shirts — how were they?
[6-13] A In the closet there was a shelf, there was some shelves, smaller shelves right here. Then there was some long ones. Maggie used to keep her clothes on these. And then there was a shorter one kind of like a little box looking thing. Alex used to keep his clothes, his belts and stuff in that. And then on top there was also an area where he kept t-shirts. They were folded and they were kept on the shelf.
[14-16] Q And when you say t-shirts, I know what a t-shirt is, but, I mean, were they t-shirts like I’m wearing right now or were they t-shirts with pockets? What was it?
[17-20] A Usually there would be t-shirts like when if they would go — like when you go to a restaurant and they have the logo, those type of t-shirts. He had a big collection of those.
[21] Q And would you put them on the shelf?
[22] A Yes, sir, I did.
[23] Q Did you iron t-shirts?
[24] A Yes, sir, I did.
[25] Q And you washed all the clothes?
[Page 2986, line 1] A Yes, I did.
[2-3] Q Did he have a certain place that he kept shorts versus long pants?
[4-17] A Yes, sir. When you walked in the master bedroom — when you enter the master bedroom, the bed was right here at the foot of the bed. You had a dresser here and a dresser here. The right dresser, in the top drawers were usually his underwear, his socks. The next drawer was his t-shirts. On the bottom drawer were the pajama pants that he would wear or his shorts that he would wear to sleep in. In the left drawer — and one sits on this side of the door going into the bathroom, and the other one is right here. On the left dresser he kept his white t-shirts that he would wear under — when he wore a suit he would wear, the t-shirts were in one of those drawers, and then the other two drawers were shorts, the dressier shorts, and then the not-so-dressier shorts.
[18-19] Q So, you testified a shirt looked like it had fallen when you saw it this morning?
[20] A Yes, sir.
[21] Q June 8th of 2021. Okay. Was it still clean?
[22] A Yes, sir.
[23] Q Did you put it back?
[24] A Yes, sir.
[25 to page 2987, line 2] Q Okay. My boss, Don Zelenka, just reminded me that the food that you cooked, did you look and see how much was eaten in the pots?
[3] A No, sir, I did not.
[4-5] Q Okay. Now, you said there was a damp towel. Where was that?
[6] A In the closet on the floor.
[7-8] Q And I know what damp means, but when you touched it, did it feel —
[9] A It was damp.
[10] Q What did you do with it?
[11] A Took it to the laundry room.
[12] Q And you said there was some pants there.
[13] A Yes, sir. There was a pair of khakis by the shower.
[14] Q And what did you do with those?
[15] A Took them to the laundry room.
[16] Q Did you wash them?
[17] A Yes, sir.
[18-19] THE COURT: Ladies and gentlemen, let’s stand for a moment.
[20] (Break in proceedings.)
[21-22] THE COURT: Ladies and gentlemen, you may go to your jury room.
[23] (The jury left the courtroom.)
[24] THE COURT: We’ll take about 10 minutes.
[25] (A break was taken.)
It the Judiciary were really under attack, one of the reasons is too-many self-interested judges whom we are forced to call “honorable” or we get thrown into incarceration for contempt of court.
And we get sold snake oil solutions as I wrote in response to David Pascoe’s attack on Jay Lucas’ candidacy:
David Pascoe wants us to believe the judges consider ONLY the pleasure of the lawyers-legislators who elect them.
What about RETIRING judges who consider the pleasure of the law firms or industrial companies which hire the retired judges as partners or as general counsel as Nexsen-Pruitt (now Maynard-Nexsen) hired Billy Wilkins and as Boeing hired Michael Luttig?
Does David Pascoe want us to ignore those?
What about the politicians who install retired judges on commissions as Governor McMaster did for Dennis Shedd?
Or what about Alan Wilson hiring W. Jeffrey Young, who “retired” vey young, pun indented?
Does David Pascoe want us to ignore those?
What about rogue prosecutors who hire retired judges as Hatchet-for-Hire Heather (Heather Weiss). when she was Interim 5th Circuit Solicitor, did for Royce Knox McMahon, who (as Hatchet-for-Hire’s employee) could not even win a conviction against a pro se criminal defendant?
Heck! What about the pleasure of South Carolina’s Chief Justice who, ALONE and at his/her SOLE PLEASURE, doles out the court assignments of retired judges/justices?
Does David Pascoe want us to ignore those?
And if David Pascoe’s answer is for South Carolina’s governor to appoint judges as the U.S. President appoints federal judges with the advice and consent of the senate, the Governor DOES appoint a whole category of jurists: COUNTY MAGISTRATES with the advice and consent of the state senate.
How miserably many of those appointments proved to be with the number of county magistrates reprimanded, removed from office, or arrested?
Does David Pascoe want us to believe that judges consider ONLY the pleasures of lawyers legislators?
WHAT IS THE ANSWER THEN?
My answer, free from false humility, is: (1) VERY STRICT recusal laws; and (2) laws which permit the reopening of any case where it can be proven that the presiding or contributing judge acted out of personal interest.
Remember the Cash-for-Kids scandal in Pennsylvania, which scandal resulted, among other things, in the reopening of all juvenile convictions by Former Judge Ciavarella, but too late for one juvenile who committed suicide in Ciavarella-ordered detention?
Do you know that the U.S. is the ONLY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD where a federal judge may sit on the case of his paternal-paternal first cousin?
And with more frequent co-habitation without benefit of clergy, why are judicial candidates NOT required to disclose the personal and financial interests of “life partners” as they are required to disclose spouses?
David Pascoe’s attack on Jay Lucas is snake oil.
So long as we recognize that the men and women who aspire to judicial positions may be influenced, the answer is broader and stricter disclosure and recusal laws, not exclusion of a category from judicial service SOLELY for age or previous public service.