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With one criminal case abandoned and the other adjudicated, the once-revered, now-convicted former Sheriff of Spartanburg County has a new date to answer for the 65 state ethics charges that have sat dormant since last year.
According to the 4th Amended Notice of Hearing in the civil case against ex-sheriff Chuck Wright, the South Carolina State Ethics Commission (SCSEC) will convene a formal hearing on August 20, 2026, at 9:30 a.m. in its Columbia hearing room.
The hearing, like at least two scheduled before it, is set to address allegations tied to the 65 state ethics charges pending against Wright: two stemming from the nepotistic hiring of his son as a deputy, and 63 stemming from his alleged misuse of a county-funded credit card.
While the full scope of his alleged credit card abuse may never be known, SCSEC investigators were still able to tally nearly $18,000 in “personal purchases” from 2020 to 2024, ranging anywhere from cigarettes and ammunition to at-home drug test kits and antidiarrheal medication.
None of that, however, resulted in state or federal charges, unlike the now-adjudicated felony conduct FITSNews exposed months before mainstream media caught on.
Nonetheless…
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The latest notice of hearing for the ethics case shows it was signed by SCSEC Executive Director Meghan Walker Dayson on July 13, 2026 – not even a week after the former sheriff was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison and given forty-five days to self-report to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP).
As the ethics filing further confirmed, it was delivered via certified mail to the attorney representing Wright on what remains of his once-sprawling legal troubles: Stephen L. Denton.
A criminal defense attorney at KD Trial Lawyers, Denton previously spent more than two decades with the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) before retiring in 2007 as a captain under then-Sheriff Wright, the very “respondent” he now represents before the ethics commission.
As for whether that client is expected to appear on August 20, 2026 the SCSEC tells FITSNews that “only individuals under subpoena” are required to attend their formal hearings.
The commission declined to comment on whether Wright falls under that requirement.
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ALL IN THE FAMILY…
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As FITSNews first reported last fall, the SCSEC charged Wright with both failing to recuse himself from, and personally participating in, the July 2024 hiring of his son, Jared “Andy” Wright, as a sworn SCSO deputy.
Despite sources alleging they advised Wright against the demonstrably nepotistic act, the veteran lawman did so anyway, in an apparent effort to not only salvage his son’s expiring law enforcement certification, but to give him a foothold toward one day becoming sheriff.
That latter ambition would soon prove impossible, with Wright resigning just ten months after hiring his son amid pending federal charges for stealing 147 opioids, diverting $89,000 cash from a deputy relief fund, and employing his cousin as a “no-show” deputy for nearly two decades.
It wasn’t but three weeks later that the younger Wright was essentially forced out of his part-time position at SCSO, to which business filings confirm he promptly founded Just The Wright Property, LLC, a self-described real estate investment company.
And like the ex-sheriff’s ethics charges, Just The Wright Property laid dormant, at least online, for another nine months before the company began using Facebook to market the homes it was buying, renovating and renting across Spartanburg County.
But back to the ethics case…
Wright’s decision to deputize his son accounts for just two of the 65 ethics charges filed against him last October. The remaining 63 center on $17,140.57 in alleged credit card abuse during his final four years as the county’s top cop.
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RELATED | THE STATE’S ABANDONED CASE AGAINST EX-SHERIFF CHUCK WRIGHT
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Those charges were laid out exhaustively by the commission last year, and include hundreds of dollars paid by then-Sheriff Wright to Fuddruckers, McDonald’s, Zaxby’s, Hardee’s, Burger King, Krispy Kreme, Chick-fil-A, Super King Buffet and other establishments.
Between bites, Wright’s Apple receipts indicate he kept himself entertained by racking up more than $1,300 in App Store charges for phone games such as Huntwise, Ramp Car Jumping and Royal Match.
All the while, Wright ran up nearly $1,600 in SiriusXM subscription fees while driving a revolving door of county pickup trucks, purportedly paid for through an opioid recovery fund. SCSEC accused him of spending approximately $1,000 on car washes for those same vehicles.
He later told state and federal investigators, during a joint interview, that he had never “purposely” taken any money from SCSO, adding, “I’ve never done nothing like that, and I won’t.”
These allegations and more were originally scheduled to be heard before the SCSEC on February 19, 2026, but the hearing was postponed after Denton sought a continuance.
In his request, first reported by FITSNews, Denton told the commission he expected “the federal sentencing matter” to conclude by April — in hindsight three months premature — and that Wright would likely resolve the ethics case by entering into a consent order.
The commission rescheduled Wright’s hearing for June 18, 2026, only to again suspend the matter pending the outcome of Wright’s federal sentencing.
That federal case has now run its course.
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On July 7, 2026, Wright received his three-and-a-half year sentence on the three public corruption charges he had pleaded guilty to nine months earlier. His sentence also included three years of supervised release and $462,866.06 in restitution.
As for his two co-defendants, the so-called “no-show” deputy received 16 months in federal prison and was ordered to pay $349,885.22 in restitution, while the chaplain who enabled Wright’s abuse of the deputy relief fund was given but five years of probation and ordered to pay only $95,442.39 in restitution.
The ethics complaints against Wright, meanwhile, were filed just over two years ago by government watchdog Kyle Joslin, former SCSO deputy turned two-time sheriff candidate Nick Duncan, and his wife, Brittney Duncan.
Of the three, only Joslin tells FITSNews he plans to attend the August 20 hearing.
This story may be updated.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Andrew Fancher is a Lone Star Emmy Award–winning journalist from Dallas, Texas. He joined FITSNews in 2023 after leaving an NBC affiliate, where he served as on-air talent. His reporting focuses on public corruption in South Carolina, with an emphasis on law enforcement misconduct and abuse of power.
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