S.C. attorney general aims to tackle huge case backlog

COLUMBIA, S.C. (WIS) - South Carolina’s top prosecutor asking for new statewide violent crimes reduction unit aimed at tackling a backlog of cases.

Attorney General Alan Wilson said in a Wednesday budget request meeting the state has more than 11,600 cases at least three years or older ― many of them murder or sex crimes cases.

Wilson detailed the plan for the unit backed by Speaker of the House Murrell Smith, R-Sumter, and other lawmakers and local law enforcement officials.

Wilson said this nearly $1.6 million ask would help deliver justice for victims more quickly and efficiently and put violent criminals in jail.

“We’re going to fix this backlog, and we’re never going to let it bad again once we get there,” Wilson said.

If approved, the initiative would devote resources to the areas in the state with the biggest backlogs through a team of prosecutors, paralegals and investigators based out of the Attorney General’s office.

It would establish four prosecutors, two paralegals, two investigators, an IT technician, and a victim’s advocate. All of these staff would be full-time positions. Under Wilson’s ask, an additional $100,000 would be set aside for potential travel and technology needs.

Wilson said prosecutors with years of experience would be targeted so that they could hit the ground running.

“We’re getting lots of retired, so people who used to be prosecutors, maybe went into the civil practice arena or the criminal defense arena and then they retired and they’re looking for, ‘Hey, I’m bored. I’m tired of being retired. They’re in their 50s, and they want to come back to work,’” he said. “There’s a lot of people like that, that is a great pool of applicants for experienced prosecutors. That’s where we’d probably go. We’re not going to do anything to hurt the solicitors and their talent pool, we’re just going to augment it.”

Wilson said it can be difficult for rural circuits to recruit and retain talent when they “go to the transfer portal,” and seek out other opportunities elsewhere in the state.

Those circuits, he said, sometimes do not have the bandwidth or resources to move cases through the criminal justice system fast enough.

“They don’t have the ability, they want the ability but they don’t have the ability to meet the demands that some of these backlogs are presenting,” Wilson said.

Victims are at the heart of the proposal, according to Wilson and lawmakers who ed the effort at a press conference following the budget request meeting.

“Violent crime has victims and victims’ families,” said Rep. Phillip Lowe, R-Florence. “The torment that they go through waiting years to hear these cases and to find justice is just not enough. We have to find some resolve for these people.”

Wilson hopes this unit would free up the solicitor’s office to focus on new cases.

Wilson labeled the backlog as the third phase of what he called a “war” on violent crime in the Palmetto State.

The first phase was millions of dollars appropriated by the General Assembly to improve technology across all 16 circuits statewide, Wilson said.

He said the second phase was more funding to bolster the ranks of both prosecutors and public defenders.

Though there are some systemic issues at play, Wilson said the COVID-19 pandemic played a significant role in cases piling up, and that there has been more attention paid to the criminal justice system in the last three years than ever before.

This would be a permanent unit within the Attorney General’s Office if the funding is approved, Smith said.

“We need to assess the success of it, and if it is successful, I think we need to grow this program if it’s needed and welcomed by the solicitors and the criminal justice system,” he said.

Wilson said one of the circuits that would be an area of focus would be the Third Circuit, which includes Sumter, Williamsburg, Lee and Clarendon counties.

That circuit has 940 pending charges more than three years old, according to the Attorney General’s office.

Sixty-one one of them are murder cases and 31 one of them are sex crimes.

The Ninth Circuit, which covers Charleston and Berkeley counties, has 1,289 pending charges, 87 of which are murder cases and 51 of which are sex crimes.

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