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by WILL FOLKS
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It’s been an eventful summer in South Carolina as the spring partisan primary season has shifted into overdrive (and gone into overtime) thanks to multiple competitive runoff elections – and now a special primary election for the U.S. Senate vacated by the sudden death of Lindsey Graham.
Palmetto politicos have had plenty of campaigns to keep track of as they prepare for the fall… and for the upcoming 2028 cycle in which South Carolina boasts the ‘First in the Nation’ (Democrat) and ‘First in the South’ (Republican) presidential primaries.
While we continue to investigate Graham’s passing, we’re also closely monitoring the special election to replace him on the GOP ballot… which will see its first big day of decision on Tuesday, August 11, 2026 (just ten days from now).
In this week’s episode, I briefly addressed the latest legal drama tied to South Carolina’s special U.S. Senate primary while also covering a major evidence battle related to the retrial of Alex Murdaugh – the next chapter in the ongoing ‘Murdaugh Murders’ crime and corruption saga.
Murdaugh’s attorneys want independent testing of some potentially critical exculpatory evidence – but they also want investigators with the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) to refrain from doing further testing of their own, arguing the evidence could potentially be “degraded.”
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In this week’s second segment, I brought our audience up to speed on research director Jenn Wood‘s detailed reporting on the upcoming trial of accused quadruple murderer Rosmore “Ross” Vilardi – whose co-defendant (and wife) was convicted earlier this year for her role in these savage slayings.
A critical motions hearing was held this week in Anderson County to determine admissible evidence and testimony tied to Ross Vilardi’s trial – which has been docketed for October of this year.
What’s going to make it into the trial? What’s going to be kept out? We’re waiting on the judge’s orders…
In our final segment, chief photog and lead investigative reporter Andrew Fancher joined me to discuss his exclusive reporting on an alleged instance of police brutality (err, “excessive force”) in Anderson County – and the myriad of responses it has provoked.
To everyone who watches our show and subscribes to our media outlet… thank you. It’s your support that drives everything we do at FITSNews. The lights, the camera, the accountability… it’s all solely attributable to your views and your subscriptions.
If you appreciate our work, please subscribe today! And if you’re already a subscriber, please consider gifting a subscription to a friend… or grabbing some of our cool merch!
Thanks again and we’ll catch you next week…
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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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1 comment
God willing and FITS permitting, I’ll keep repeating what I’ve been writing and saying since the beginning of Richard Alexander Murdaugh’s (“RAM”) now-vacated first trial: RAM would not even have been falsely indicted if South Carolina’s (“SC”) criminal “justice” system had not been hi-jacked by lawyers on one side or the other of civil and/or family court litigation for the hi-jacking lawyer/party to gain unfair advantage in the civil and/or family court litigation, all in blatant, even boastful, violation of the canon of “ethics” for lawyers, specifically in SC:
RULE 4.5: THREATENING CRIMINAL PROSECUTION
A lawyer shall not present, participate in presenting, or threaten to present criminal or professional disciplinary charges solely to obtain an advantage in a civil matter.
Comment
This Rule is not included in the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. The language of this Rule is based upon DR 7 105 of the Code of Professional Responsibility.
RAM’s defense team is guilty of acquiescence to, even participation in, that hi-jacking when they were prosecutors.
And every jurist in SC, state or federal, active or retired, is guilty of glorifying that hi-jacking when they acquiesced to, even participated in, the continuing punishment of Dr. Marie Faltas for having defended herself, thank God and WITHOUT A LAWYER, successfully in a 22-26 February 2010 jury trial presided over by none other than Judge Clifton Newman, who had complimented Dr. Faltas ON THE TRANSCRIBED RECORD as “most pleasant and gracious” and “not [pressing points] frivolously at all.”
It was obvious to all that Dr. Faltas was the victim, NOT PERPETRATOR, of relentless harassment by her landlord who wanted to usurp Dr. Faltas’ and her mother’s then-newly-purchased adjacent vacant lot of land. It was obvious to all that said landlord bribed his/her other tenants with free rent and lease-restrictions/violations-waivers to testify falsely against Dr. Faltas.
Yet, to this day, almost 17 years after Dr. Faltas’ now-proven-false 2 December 2009 arrest, Dr. Faltas is treated as if she were the villain and subjected to humiliating and physically-torturous treatment in SC’s courts to the point of putting her life at risk.
For one example, all pro se litigants, including convicted serial rapists and murderers, may represent themselves pro se as appellants and/or respondents and file electronically before SC’s appellate courts.
ALL except Dr. Faltas.
All may use phone and/or email to inquire about their cases.
ALL except Dr. Faltas.
There even is a court exhibit authenticated by now-retired-but-ever-popping-up-for-paid-gigs Daniel E. Shearouse instructing SC’s appellate court employees to read a talismanic statement to Dr. Faltas then hung up on her whenever she calls to inquire about a case of hers.
Curiously, those SC jurists and court employees expect Dr. Faltas to respect them when they do not respect themselves or respect their oaths of office to treat all litigants civilly AND without discrimination.
Linking back to RAM’s request for DNA testing and SLED’s effort to destroy the specimen (under guise of re-testing it by STR) before it gets tested by single nucleotide polymorphism (“SNP”), a plausible explanation emerges: SLED and Creighton Waters know or suspect SNP will reveal one of Paul and Maggie’s real shooters to have been a party to civil litigation involving RAM. Those real shooters needed, not only to eliminate Paul and Maggie as witnesses, but to pin the shootings on RAM to cripple any negotiating position he might have had in the civil litigation(s).
And another curiosity, which proves how RAM’s defense team played into Creighton Waters’ hands, emerges from the attachment to that most recent motion/memorandum by RAM’s defense: there WAS a “blue tarp” which was NEVER tested for gun smoke residue (“GSR”).
What was GSR-tested instead was a blue JACKET never owned or worn by RAM but likely to have been hunted-in by ANOTHER male member of his family.
That is what I call “Oh! The sky is blue; therefore, the defendant must be guilty” prosecution bluster used against Dr. Faltas and later against RAM.
In Dr. Faltas’ trial, Hatchet-for-Hire Heather (“Weiss”) wanted the jury to believe that every time Dr. Faltas looked out of her own window, she did so to “survey” her then-unemployed and noise-making neighbor Teresa Felicia Ingram-Jackson.
BTW, now at almost 50, according to her FaceBook page, the tattooed Teresa Felicia Ingram-Jackson (nicknaming herself “Nikki Icecream Ingram”) appears to have finally risen from the unemployed, college-dropout, credit-card-stealing maid she was when she was bribed to falsely testify against Dr. Faltas in 2009-2011 into a recent holder of a minor technician’s certification in the health care industry. Nikki Icecream Ingram appears to have followed to Atlanta, Ga., one Brian Aldwin Jackson, a convicted mid-level drug dealer and Sumter chop-shop operator previously married to that Teresa/Nikki for a period of time Teresa/Nikki lied about under oath in various court proceedings. The City of Columbia has NOT collected, or attempted to collect, the fine imposed on that Teresa/Therese Ingram upon her 2013 conviction (in State of South Carolina vs Therese Ingram – Case Number: L083175 – Court Agency: Columbia Municipal Court – Filed Date: 12/14/2012 – Case Type: Criminal – Case Sub Type: – Status: Disposed – Assigned Judge: Solomon, Carl L – Disposition Judge: Solomon, Carl L – Disposition: TIA Guilty Bench Trial Fine Only – Disposition Date: 07/25/2013) of having victimized Dr. Faltas with disorderly conduct.
Contrast that with the City of Columbia’s hounding Dr. Faltas from December 2010 to February 2011 with ELEVEN contempt-of-court threat for having, as was and is her right, a jury list which proved that then-Columbia-Councilor, now-Columbia-Mayor Richenmann, was summoned for jury duty but never bothered to show up.
Of course, no ethical violation, no crime, is too bad to be punished IF it injures Dr. Faltas and/or RAM.
And of course, the great Dr. Faltas did not play into Weiss’ hands but stayed on message: this is police and prosecutorial corruption insulting the jury’s intelligence by portraying every innocent and normal act/activity as criminal/criminally-motivated.
Creighton Waters must have been laughing in his sleeve as RAM’s defense called RAM’s brother-in-law to testify that said relative never saw RAM wearing that blue jacket (which proves nothing, really) INSTEAD of having simply shown Mushelle Smith the “blue tarp” (State’s 174) alongside the blue jacket (State’s 173) and asked her which one she claims she saw RAM bring into Almeda then challenging SLED for not having GSR-tested State’s 174.
Oh! The sky is blue and Dr. Faltas looked out of her own window; therefore, she was harassing Teresa Ingram!
Oh! Some blue jacket has GSR and Mushelle Smith saw RAM with a blue tarp at Almeda; therefore he shot Paul and Maggie!
RAM’s defense team had, and still have, no moral authority to condemn those defense tactics because, as former prosecutors themselves, they could have used such tactics.
Most charitably to RAM’s defense team, they still have no moral authority to condemn RAM’s malicious prosecution because, to this day, they know about Weiss’ malicious prosecution of Dr. Faltas but say nothing against it because they want Weiss’ good will in some possible plea deal for some possible future client.
That is why INNOCENT criminal defendants have a better acquittal rate when pro se than when represented.
Why? Perhaps because the pro se advocate has ONLY ONE client, past, present, and/or future: herself. She does not need to soft-chew her defenses to stay in the prosecutor’s good graces for the benefit of future clients.
And that is why the system, built to maximize lawyer employment and profits, views Dr. Faltas as the worst villain of all: she refuses to spend money she does not have to hire a lawyer she cannot trust, all for that lawyer to get for Dr. Faltas a result she does not want: pleading guilty to what she did not do.
And that is why Dr. Faltas stopped signing her pro se pleadings with the empty rote “respectfully.” She cannot respect a system which does not respect itself.
What she does have for the participants in that system is hope that they would rise above the facile advantages of falsity to the moral majesty of repentance and redemption.