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State court system, judges need help from lawmakers

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The booming populations in Beaufort and Jasper counties mean greater demand and greater strains on the courts.

South Carolina Chief Justice Jean Toal painted a dire picture in her recent State of the Judiciary speech to the S.C. Bar Association.

Toal said South Carolina has the lowest number of judges per 100,000 people and the highest number of filings per trial judge of any state.

A South Carolina judge’s caseload is more than 2.3 times the national average — 4,167 cases versus 1,754 cases, Toal said.

To ease backlogs, Toal said she has asked state lawmakers this year for funding for three more circuit court judges and three more family court judges. The state has 46 circuit and 52 family court judges serving in full-time positions, according to the state Office of Court Administration. But lawmakers haven’t expanded the number of judges in a decade.

Given the population increases here in the five-county 14th Judicial Circuit alone, you can see that the court system — both criminal and civil — can’t help but fall behind. Beaufort County’s population has increased from about 121,000 in the 2000 census to an estimated 138,000 in 2005. Jasper County’s population is expected to soar in the coming decade. The estimated population in 2005 was about 21,000, but a Clemson University study estimates that number could grow to 180,000 over the next 20 years.

Population is a huge factor in the number of cases, says Fourteenth Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone. He’s already seeing the number of cases growing in Jasper County.

“Beaufort is first, Colleton is second,” Stone says. “But third, and gaining quickly, is Jasper.”

And for Beaufort County, which accounts for about half the caseload in the circuit, more than 2 million tourists a year also is a huge factor. Tourists also are crime victims, witnesses and defendants, Stone points out.

Stone has worked hard to increase his office’s efficiencies. In the last quarter of 2006, his office moved 30 percent of the docket in Beaufort County. That means his team disposed of more cases during the quarter than came in the door. That happened in four out of five counties in the circuit. Only Allendale County — the circuit’s smallest — did not meet that mark.

But gaining even more ground is difficult because of the way the state hands out money.

State funding is divided up on a per capita basis, Stone says, but that doesn’t take tourists into account at all, and it is based on 2000 census figures.

State lawmakers need to devise a system that recognizes a simple truth: More people means more crime and more legal disputes.

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