‘A System Built To Fail Us’: Judicial Reformers Rally for Change

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by JENN WOOD

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The speeches were raw. The stories were harrowing. And the political stakes were unmistakably high.

At a judicial reform press conference last Saturday (November 15, 2025), three families — each devastated by failures of South Carolina’s court system — delivered some of the most searing, unfiltered testimony ever leveled at the institutions controlling “justice” in the Palmetto State.

Their accounts were echoed and amplified by four statewide candidates — including attorney general Alan Wilson and congressman Ralph Norman — who openly confronted the political machine long accused of protecting violent offenders, shielding judicial misconduct, and silencing victims.

The gathering ran nearly two hours — but it took only minutes for its purpose to become clear: South Carolina’s judicial system isn’t just broken, it’s rigged. And rigged systems do not fix themselves.

State representative Joe White — who has spent the last three years pushing for structural change — convened the event with a blistering indictment of lawyer-legislator control over South Carolina’s courts.

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“Politics and money rule when we should be governed by principle and fairness,” White said, highlighting a mathematical imbalance that has fueled conflict-of-interest concerns for decades.

Lawyers make up less than one quarter of one percent of South Carolina’s working population, but they constitute more than 30% of the S.C. General Assembly. More ominously, they control the state’s Judicial Merit Selection Commission (JMSC) – the powerful body that screens and selects judges. Then also wield outsized influence when lawmakers vote on those candidates (South Carolina is one of only two states in the entire country where the legislature elects judges).

White’s bill — H.4516 — would remove legislators from the JMSC entirely and place judicial vetting under the executive branch, aligning the process more closely with the federal model.

But Saturday’s press conference was not about procedure – it was about the consequences of the current system’s failure.

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RELATED | REFORM MOVEMENT GROWS

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‘YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW BROKEN THE SYSTEM IS…’

Among those providing commentary at White’s event was Lori Williams, whose brother – retired Rock Hill, S.C. police lieutenant Larry Vaughan – was beaten to death in the summer of 2021.  Former Chester County sheriff’s deputy Evan Hawthorne was convicted of Vaughn’s murder earlier this year.

At Saturday’s event, Williams – who has become an outspoken advocate on judicial reform – revisited her family’s ordeal with a precision only someone who has lived inside the system could deliver.

It took four years, one month, and eleven days to bring her brother’s case to trial. During that time, Williams said, her family was repeatedly “revictimized by the system,” forced to watch a defense bolstered by a sitting legislator exploit procedural tools unavailable to ordinary defendants.

She explained how lawyer-legislators’ statutory immunity allowed them to delay proceedings for months at a time, slowing the case to a crawl and stretching her family’s suffering across nearly half a decade.

Then came the moment that still stings: The defendant — twice denied bond — received a $250,000 bond after the lawyer-legislator joined the defense team. He spent more than two years free in the community while awaiting trial.

“It shouldn’t be that the wealthy and the ones who have connections are the ones who control other people’s lives,” Williams said — a theme repeated throughout the morning.

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RELATED | JAIL CALLS EXPOSE ‘INJUSTICE SYSTEM’

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‘PUNISHED FOR PROTECTING MY CHILDREN’

FITSNews has chronicled the failings of South Carolina’s family court system for years, including the devastating consequences of secretive hearings, unchecked guardians ad litem, and courts incentivized by billable conflict rather than child safety. Still — nothing underscored those problems more starkly than the testimony of Shanda Nichol.

Nichol described years of severe domestic violence, multiple affidavits from professionals warning the court that she and her children were unsafe – even a safety plan from the S.C. Department of Social Services (SCDSS) requiring round-the-clock supervision of the father. None of it mattered, she said.

Instead, she walked into what she called an “ambush hearing” — a proceeding in which neither side knows what evidence will be presented — and watched the judge adopt the opposing attorney’s unsupported allegations of “parental alienation.”

Within minutes, the court:

• stripped her of her home,
• granted the father full financial control,
• removed supervised visitation safeguards, and
• warned her she could be jailed if she didn’t pay thousands to a newly appointed guardian ad litem.

“I walked into court with all my evidence,” Nichol said. “Evidence didn’t matter. Professionals didn’t matter. The law didn’t matter.”

Her testimony directly echoed what FITSNews has long reported: family court in South Carolina is a profit-driven, unmonitored system where money dictates outcomes and parents without resources are crushed.

“This is real life that I’m living,” she said. “I’ve been punished for speaking the truth.”

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RELATED | EQUAL PARENTING LAW INTRODUCED

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‘SHE WAS GOING TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE’

Our audience is intimately familiar with the story of Logan Hailey Federico, the 22-year-old college student who was brutally executed during a robbery near the campus of the University of South Carolina earlier this year. Federico’s case has reignited a statewide debate about violent repeat offenders and judicial leniency.

Her father, Steve Federico, spoke last. His voice shook – but his message didn’t.

“They played with Logan’s life,” he said. “And Logan lost.”

The career criminal accused of murdering Logan had 39 prior arrests – including 25 felony charges — yet was allowed to cycle through the justice system again and again despite escalating violence. Federico emphasized a point we have made repeatedly in prior reporting: nothing about Logan’s murder was unpredictable.

This was a preventable tragedy — one enabled by judicial decisions that minimized the danger posed by chronic violent offenders. And by holes within the system.

Federico vowed to push for national offender-tracking reforms — a mission that began, he said, the moment he realized the justice system that failed his daughter had the potential to fail countless others.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he told the crowd.

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RELATED | ‘YOU WOKE UP A BEAST’

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REFORM TAKES CENTER STAGE

If Saturday’s press conference made one thing unmistakably clear, it’s this: judicial and criminal justice reform have become flashpoint issues in the upcoming 2026 election. Candidates for governor and attorney general didn’t just show up; they aligned themselves with victims, distanced themselves from the lawyer-legislator establishment, and made reform a central plank of their campaigns.

Attorney general Wilson, now seeking the governor’s office, used his remarks to underscore a point he has been making privately to lawmakers for years: South Carolina’s judicial selection process is structurally flawed because it places all the power in one branch of government.

Wilson pointed to the testimony heard at the press conference but added his own example of how the JMSC has overridden basic competency standards.

He recalled a conversation from the 2023 judicial reform debates with a woman who served on a Citizens Advisory Committee – a volunteer group that reviewed applicants before they reached the JMSC.

The committee member told Wilson her panel reviewed a candidate seeking a family court judgeship who had never practiced family law, never handled a family court case, and had no meaningful qualifications for the position.

Her committee politely told the applicant: “Thank you for applying. We recommend you go practice family law for a few years and come back.”

The JMSC ignored this recommendation.

“And that person,” Wilson said, “is now sitting on the family court bench.”

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For Wilson, the example illustrated the core problem: the JMSC answers to no one except the legislature.

He then expanded the point into the heart of his reform argument:

“What I mean by that is this,” Wilson told the crowd. “If you don’t like the quality of judges we have — because they are letting violent criminals out over and over and over again, or they’re not following the law the way they’re supposed to — you can go to your House member or your Senator and yell at them and vote against them.”

“But guess what?” he continued. “There are 168 other members of the General Assembly you don’t get to vote for.”

The system, Wilson said, consolidates power but disperses accountability — leaving voters with virtually no way to influence the quality, philosophy, or competence of South Carolina’s judges.

Wilson proposed relocating the JMSC under the executive branch — with the governor appointing commissioners and staff, and a strengthened Citizens Advisory Committee reviewing applicants before they advance.

“If a judicial candidate has never practiced law in the very court they hope to serve and the governor still allows them to go forward — that governor does not deserve to be governor,” Wilson said.

“Everybody in this room can only vote for your House member and Senator,” Wilson emphasized. “But everybody in this room can vote for or against the governor. That brings more accountability to the system.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, we need more accountability,” Wilson continued. “We need more transparency. And that can only happen if we do these reforms.”

Joining Wilson at the event was Norman, a gubernatorial candidate who has tied judicial reform directly to public safety and trust in government. Norman criticized policymakers who hide behind crime statistics and abstract bureaucratic explanations while families continue to suffer preventable tragedies.

“There’s a disconnect,” Norman said plainly. “People are talking data while families are burying their children.”

Wilson and Norman’s presence — and their tone on this issue — underscored just how central judicial reform will be in the 2026 governor’s race.

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CANDIDATES PULL BACK THE CURTAINS

On the attorney general front, both candidates — solicitors David Pascoe and David Stumbo — used the event to sharpen their own reform platforms.

Pascoe, one of the movement’s earliest advocates, didn’t just call for reform: he called out the political machine fighting to stop it.

Pascoe warned the crowd that even those claiming to support reform will “fight like hell not to get it passed.” Then he offered proof — recounting a case he had posted about days earlier, in which a victim waited five years for justice because a defense attorney who was a lawyer-legislator repeatedly invoked legislative immunity to secure continuances.

“When I posted it,” Pascoe said, “a lawyer-legislator on the JMSC went off on it. Imagine that.”

He told the crowd he rarely engages on social media, but couldn’t ignore what happened in that courtroom:

• Five continuances, all tied to legislative privilege.
• The last one requested because the defense lawyer “had to get their hair done for a TV interview.”
• A judge apologizing in advance to the lawyer-legislator in case court staff didn’t address him by his “honorary title” during the plea.

“How does that make a victim feel?” Pascoe asked. “How does that make the prosecutor feel? How does it make the other defendants feel who are going before that judge without a lawyer-legislator?”

Instead of being outraged by the conduct, Pascoe said, a JMSC member was outraged at Pascoe for calling it out.

“He is mad, and his friends are mad,” Pascoe told the crowd. “Because it’s not about service to you, the people. It’s about making money.”

Pascoe didn’t name the legislator in his remarks — but the online exchange was with state representative Leon Stavrinakis, a long-time Charleston lawyer-legislator and JMSC member who publicly accused Pascoe of being “a fraud.” Pascoe responded by calling Stavrinakis “one of the two worst abusers of lawyer-legislator protection in the General Assembly” – and urged him to resign from the JMSC.

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The clash crystallized the political stakes: if the legislature retains control of the judicial selection process, nothing changes – and some lawmakers intend to keep it that way.

Solicitor Stumbo took the conversation even further — arguing that true reform is impossible without rewriting the state’s constitution.

Stumbo told the crowd he supported moving away from legislative control entirely and toward a federal-style appointment system, one that voters intuitively understand and that already shapes national politics.

“I would take it, folks, a step further,” Stumbo said. “We can’t do this without amending Article Five, Section 27 of the state constitution. I would like to see us mimic the federal law, because that’s what we’re all used to.”

He reminded attendees how presidential elections motivate voters because they determine the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court — and argued South Carolina deserves a judicial system grounded in the same principles of democratic accountability.

“We need to mimic that in South Carolina,” he said. “That’s going to take, I believe, a constitutional amendment to allow the governor to appoint — after the vetting of the applicants — one candidate for a judicial appointment, the one the governor believes is the best. And the legislature should vote up or down after confirmation. That’s the best system.”

Stumbo’s position signaled a bolder reform vision than most lawmakers have publicly embraced: a full constitutional realignment of judicial power — away from the General Assembly and toward the executive branch — with voters ultimately deciding who holds that authority.

He also cautioned that the dysfunction described by victims Saturday extends far beyond criminal cases, warning:
“the system destroys families long before a criminal case ever makes the news.”

Stumbo’s remarks underscored a point often lost in the broader political debate: South Carolina’s judicial crisis is not confined to violent crime. It runs through family court, probate, magistrate court, and civil litigation — and reform that stops at bond hearings won’t fix it.

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THE COMING FIGHT…

Saturday’s press conference wasn’t a rally. It wasn’t a photo op. It was a warning — delivered by grieving families, echoed by statewide candidates, and heard by every powerbroker who has spent decades treating South Carolina’s judiciary like a private club.

The lawyer-legislator machine is already pushing back. They’re circling the wagons, minimizing the horror stories, attacking the people speaking out, and insisting — against all evidence — that nothing is wrong.

But the truth is no longer polite. And it can no longer be ignored.

A system built on privilege and political insulation has finally collided with the people it was supposed to serve. And with reform bills already being drafted for 2026 — and every House seat on the ballot next spring — the era of quiet deference to the General Assembly’s control of the courts is ending.

Judicial reform is now a kitchen-table issue. A public-safety issue. A moral issue.

And thanks to the families who stood at that podium, it’s also a vote-moving issue.

The question facing lawmakers in January is the same one victims asked on Saturday: Will you fight to fix this system — or fight to protect it?

There is no third option. Not anymore.

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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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