Domestic violence bill gets new life

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Members of the Judiciary Committee, some of whom mocked the domestic violence bill in a recording of their meeting, approved making cockfighting a felony and killed a measure to increase the penalty for criminal domestic violence to a felony for the second offense.

The action and televised comments by the bill's chief antagonist, Rep. John Graham Altman III, R-Charleston, has triggered outrage among women's groups and deluged the committee staff with complaints.

"I can tell you a new bill is going in next week," House Speaker David Wilkins, R-Greenville, said Thursday.

Judiciary Chairman Jim Harrison, R-Columbia, said Altman's broadcast comments created a "48-hour firestorm." Altman made the motion to kill the bill.

"The woman (who is abused) ought to not be around the man," Altman told a WIS-TV reporter after the committee hearing, The Associated Press reported. "I mean, you women want it one way and not another," he told the female reporter.

Altman did not return calls Thursday seeking comment.

Rep. Bob Leach, R-Greenville, one of the bill's co-sponsors, questioned some members' treatment of the bill and said that during an earlier subcommittee meeting "someone told me it was a man-hating bill."

Asked if he felt the panel handled the bill properly, Leach responded, "No sir. I would have preferred they leave it in subcommittee and rewrite it, let us work on it, than just completely kill it."

Most, he said, "were embarrassed the way it was handled."

According to the committee staff's tape of Monday's hearing, the committee spent 12 minutes on the bill.

Altman can be heard launching into a series of questions. "Is it my understanding this bill would not apply to females that attack men?" He was told the measure doesn't change the definition of criminal domestic violence, which applies to both genders.

"Can you tell me why the subcommittee, in its great wisdom, entitles this Protect Our Women in Every Relationship (POWER)?" he asks.

In the background, someone can be heard suggesting it be renamed "Protect Our People In Every Relationship," or POPER.

Someone then jokes, "Pop her again," prompting laughter in the room.

Later, Altman says, "I'm just so excited I move to table," and the committee tabled the bill on a voice vote.

Altman, AP reported, said there were problems with the bill and the outcry was "manufactured" by groups that have always opposed him. "I've gotten some very supportive calls from people that understand the problems with the bill," the AP quoted him as saying.

Patrick Dennis, the committee's assistant chief counsel, said the committee has received about 500 phone calls. Dennis said e-mails haven't been counted.

Wilkins said he has "not seen any inappropriate activity. I understand there are allegations of that."

Harrison, Wilkins said, "assures me it was taken seriously" and defects were the overriding factor in killing the measure.

But Wilkins said, "Mr. Altman doesn't speak for me on this subject."

Wilkins said any suggestion that "we care more about chickens fighting than women being battered borders on absurdity. It was ironic that the two bills were in the same meeting at the same time, but they have no connection."

One was a legitimate effort to curtail the "brutal sport" of cock fighting, Wilkins said, and the other involved what he said was a constitutionally flawed bill to increase penalties for spousal abuse.

In South Carolina, criminal domestic violence first and second offense is considered a misdemeanor handled in magistrate's court that carries up to 30 days in jail if convicted. A third offense is still a misdemeanor but is handled in circuit court and carries a penalty of up to three years in prison, AP reported.

South Carolina law has a separate category of domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature when an assault is committed with a deadly weapon, results in serious injury or could cause a person to fear death or serious bodily injury. Those cases are felonies no matter what and carry a maximum of 10 years, according to AP.

Those convicted must serve 85 percent of their sentences before being eligible for parole.

Where there is nothing more than a $100 fine for cock fighting now, spousal abuse is a 10-year felony with a requirement that 85 percent of the sentence be served before parole eligibility kicks in, Wilkins said.

"The penalties are already substantial and we're attempting to strengthen them," he said of the two-year-old domestic violence statute.

Harrison and Wilkins predicted that a new bill would be ready next week. Wilkins predicted that there is a "decent chance" to get it out in the session's final six weeks. It would then have to go to the Senate.

Rep. James Smith, D-Columbia, the Judiciary Committee's first vice-chairman who was not present for the meeting, said the legislation is not dead though it could have been handled better through more debate or amendments.

"This is not a setback that would prevent anything from being passed this year," he said. "There is too much broad-based, bipartisan support."

Harrison said cockfighting is the entry-level blood sport and progresses to dog fighting with "huge amounts" of money wagered."

"We have one of nation's weakest cockfighting laws and to tie the two bills together on the outcome" isn't justified, Harrison said, because "we have a law that makes domestic violence a 10-year felony."

The $100 penalty for cockfighting, he said, is considered by some as little more than the cost of doing business.

Animal fighting became a major issue last year when state Agriculture Commissioner Charles Sharpe was charged in a federal crackdown of an Aiken cockfighting ring. In January, he gave up his office and pleaded guilty to lying to a federal officer and taking a $10,000 bribe to protect a cockfighting organization from legal trouble.

Harrison said the abuse bill "failed not because of the good provisions that we're going to reintroduce (but) because of all the extraneous matters" including provisions expanding divorce law, court procedures and magistrates' training.

(Tim Smith of the Columbia bureau contributed to this report.)

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Dan Hoover covers politics and can be reached at 298-4883.