Remember when the South Carolina Supreme Court declared that the state’s solicitor-controlled criminal docket was unconstitutional. That happened in November 2012, when the court issued the Langford decision. Two years, nine months and a few weeks later, solicitors are still ...

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COLUMBIA (AP) — South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson is formally appealing a judge’s ruling that tossed out the state’s ban on same-sex marriages. Wilson on Thursday filed a notice he would be appealing to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court ...

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Alexander v. Barnwell County Hospital Even though, by the time the bankruptcy court allowed the defendant-hospital to consummate its bankruptcy plan, the S.C. Supreme Court had already ruled that it was unconstitutional for the county council to install itself as the hospital’s board, this appeal – seeking an unwinding of that plan – is moot.

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Shelley v. County of Kershaw The parties’ arguments assume that the defendant-county’s detention center had a policy of non-intervention: detention center officers may not exit the intake area of the detention center and intervene in an altercation between a deputy sheriff and a detainee. However, there is no evidence that, prior to the handcuffed plaintiff’s beating by a deputy sheriff in the detention center’s sally port, there were any incidents of any unconstitutional use of force by sheriff’s deputies against arrestees in the sally port which would have resulted in notice to the county, prior to this incident, that a policy of non-interference would result in constitutional violations.

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Barton v. South Carolina Department of Probation Parole & Pardon Services A change in a parole statute -- requiring a two-thirds vote of the parole board rather than a majority vote to grant parole to violent offenders -- is an unconstitutional ex post facto law as applied to petitioner, who was convicted of murder before the statutory amendment. Even under the new law, a vote in favor of parole by four of the six board members who attended petitioner’s hearing was sufficient to grant her parole.

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