Threaten a public official or one of their family members and you could get five years in jail. Hitting a school teacher might send a student to prison for a year.

But threatening or slapping a spouse? That might bring only 30 days behind bars.

And that has some in South Carolina wondering about the state’s domestic violence laws — particularly since the House Judiciary Committee killed a domestic violence bill last week.

The issue received an even higher profile because of comments from Rep. John Graham Altman, R-Charleston, following the bill’s death.

“Women should be as protected as legislators,” said Lachlan McIntosh, state director of the S.C. Democratic Party. “They are just as valuable to our state as legislators, maybe more so.”

Legislators say the disparities in penalties are easy to explain.

There’s a greater need for protection for police, politicians, teachers and some health care providers whose jobs put them at risk of harm, said Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland.

Because of that, “people in public positions should have some added protection,” said House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Harrison, R-Richland.

“With criminal domestic violence, you’re only talking about violent acts with people in that relationship,” Rutherford said.

That’s not to say criminal domestic violence doesn’t have a special place in state law.

People slapping or threatening spouses or domestic partners are treated differently than those who get into a bar fight.

For instance, assault and battery charges are routinely dropped in magistrate courts, but the Attorney General’s office instructs prosecutors not to drop domestic violence charges.

There’s also a progression of fines and jail time. A first offense of criminal domestic violence brings up to 30 days in jail or up to $500 in fines. The second conviction brings both. Those cases are handled in a magistrate’s court. A third offense can mean three years in prison and is handled in circuit court. All three are misdemeanors.

The legislation killed in Harrison’s committee would not have changed those penalties, he said.

Nor would it have changed penalties for the next level of domestic violence offenses — those where people cause serious injury with or without weapons or who threaten death.

In 2003, the Legislature turned those offenses into felonies with 10-year prison terms.

Altman’s comments brought criticism and protests this week.

“I do not understand why women continue to go back around men who abuse them,” he said in an interview Tuesday on WIS-TV.

“I’ve asked women that and they all tell me the same answer, ‘John Graham, you don’t understand.’ And I say you’re right, I don’t understand.”

So where is the dividing line between misdemeanor criminal domestic violence and more serious felony offenses?

A slap or shove might bring charges under the misdemeanor law. But blows leaving victims bruised or bloodied likely would get the felony charges of criminal domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature.

It’s left up to prosecutors, Attorney General Henry McMaster said. Many first offenses under the state’s criminal domestic violence laws now are considered felonies, he said.

“A deadly weapon can be a fist,” McMaster said. “The fist of a 250-pound man against the cheek of a 105-pound woman with maximum velocity is a deadly weapon. So is a shoe or a table or stack of plates.”

McMaster says the laws against criminal domestic violence still need toughening.

His office runs a volunteer program that works to prosecute even the lower-offense domestic violence cases.

“The laws have gotten better, but we still have a long way to go,” McMaster said. Domestic violence, he says, “is the No. 1 crime problem in South Carolina. ... It not only destroys the lives of women and some men, but it destroys the lives of children who are trying to grow up in that environment.”

But the legislation that died this week, sponsored by Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, wasn’t the way to do that, Rutherford said.

“Most people that looked at it knew it was a bad bill,” he said. “The bill should have been dead.”

The issue, however, is very much alive.

Harrison said he is in the final stages of helping Cobb-Hunter draft a new bill. He expects that bill to be in the House this week.