In 1988, Tara Anderson Thompson was a young and
attractive law student who stunned the state's legal community by accusing a
judge of snorting cocaine.
The charge triggered what would become the most polarizing judicial fight in
recent Charleston history, elevating the soft-spoken, 25-year-old student from
classroom obscurity into the center of a political firestorm.
Long after the dust cleared, she would be known as the beauty who helped
bring down a judge.
Nearly 20 years later, her own use of cocaine has helped to end her legal
career.
Thompson, 44, a mother of three, was found guilty last month in federal court
of conspiring to launder drug money. The federal conviction comes on top of a
state drug case for aiding and abetting the act of marijuana distribution to
which she's already pleaded guilty.
Drug user is not a label she envisioned when she started out as a lawyer some
17 years ago. Other than to cope with the depression after the breakup of her
second marriage, she can't point to a reason why she began abusing the drug with
a small circle of other lawyers during a nine-month stretch from 2002-2003.
It was her first time, she says.
"I certainly wasn't counting my blessings at a time when I should have been,"
Thompson said last week at the James Island home-flooring business where she
works as a bookkeeper, awaiting a sentencing hearing that could be months away.
"I made a huge mistake."
She faces a maximum of 20 years in prison, but realistically her time behind
bars is likely to be measured in months, not years, if she goes to jail at all.
Thompson concedes her law career is over. She says she has no desire to
practice again even though she dreamed of being a lawyer since she was 9.
Thompson said she never touched cocaine before 2002. Not in high school, not
in college. But her name had long been associated with the white powdery drug
after an incident at a party that occurred nearly 15 years earlier.
In March 1988, while a third-year law student, she claimed Circuit Judge
Larry Richter of Charleston and another lawyer had offered her cocaine at a
solicitor's party.
At a judicial screening hearing in Columbia, she testified the two men put
their fingers to their noses and made sniffing sounds, which she interpreted as
a gesture for using cocaine.
The charge sparked a firestorm among the state's legal corps, which already
had divided into pro- and anti-Richter camps. The allegation never was proven
and Richter denied the charge. But he opted against seeking another term on the
bench, later winning a seat in the state Senate.
Today, Thompson stands by her claim, adding that it was only the tip of the
iceberg into illegal drug use by Charleston's legal community.
"Back then I was real naive and just didn't know what to expect from a
judge," she said. "Now, after practicing law for 17 years, what I've seen and
the criminals I've represented . I realized it was commonplace, and it was
commonplace in Charleston."
She said she's seen Richter once since the 1988 hearing, crossing paths
inside an elevator in Columbia.
"I asked him if he was there to apologize. He sort of got off the elevator
and snarled at me," she said.
Richter declined to comment about the incident, but said, "Nothing that that
individual says should be dignified by a response."
After law school, Thompson left the Richter case behind. She worked as a
public defender in Orangeburg and also in the firm of the late state Sen.
Marshall Williams. Afterward she returned to Charleston, where she had graduated
from the College of Charleston in 1984. After a few months in the public
defender's office, she struck out on her own.
Her cases ran from mundane defense and trial work to the high profile. One of
her clients was Jacob Leon Taylor, one of a group of men charged with the
shooting death of 19-year-old Shannon McConaughey of St. Stephen, in 1998. The
charges against Taylor and some of the other defendants later were dropped for
lack of evidence.
Few members of Charleston's legal community are willing to talk openly about
Thompson, either in terms of her reputation as a private practice lawyer or the
conviction. She is one of three local attorneys who were caught up in a wider
prosecution that's became known as Charleston's cocaine lawyer conspiracy.
"It's a matter for the courts, not the Bar," said Charleston County Bar
Association president Frank McCann.
One of Thompson's law school classmates working in Charleston declined to
respond. So did other lawyers she'd worked with in Charleston.
Thompson's cocaine use came when she joined a circle that bought, sold and
used the drug. The group included two other attorneys, Damon Cook, a former
Charleston County assistant prosecutor, and Todd Anthony Strich.
"They made it look so easy and harmless that I just thought it was OK," she
said.
When her children and husband were gone, the rest of the drug circle would
assemble at her home near Folly Beach and do drugs, she said. Police made
several arrests in connection with their drug use. All three lawyers pleaded
guilty to state charges.
The state prosecutor who handled the case declined to discuss Thompson's role
beyond what was said in court, citing the privacy restrictions surrounding grand
jury testimony.
Thompson received probation and was subsequently convicted on associated
federal charges.
She had moved drug money through her law firm's trust fund account, a
practice that has since led to stricter accounting requirements on the part of
law firms by the South Carolina Supreme Court.
While she awaits sentencing for the federal conviction, Thompson said her
salvation is church. On Sundays, Thompson, who was raised Catholic, and her
three children attend the Greater Refuge Temple, an Apostolic congregation on
Huger Street in peninsular Charleston.
Minister Walter Jackson said she's welcome because the church is about faith
and redemption.
Schuyler Kropf covers courts and legal issues. Contact him at skropf@postandcourier.com or
937-5551.
