Earle E. Morris Jr. sat stoically in the witness stand during a September pre-trial hearing when his lawyer asked if he could follow what was being said.

“Can you hear me?”

Blank, but pleasant, look.

“Mr. Morris, can you hear me?”

Another blank but pleasant look. Then an admission: “I don’t hear so well out of this (left) ear, but I don’t want to put an ear thing in,” Morris said. “It reveals my age.”

Morris, 76, was among the top contenders in the Democratic party to be governor nearly 30 years ago. Now, the lifelong politician is fighting to preserve his legacy after the collapse of Carolina Investors, the company that hired him as its titular chairman.

After a monthlong delay so Morris’ lawyers could review new evidence, his trial on 24 felony charges of fraud is scheduled to start Monday with jury selection in Florence. The trial is to be held in Greenville.

Changes in Morris’ personal life and in S.C.’s political climate are cited as reasons his gubernatorial run derailed. Now the Morris legacy could be capped by his role at Carolina Investors.

More than 8,000 investors —many the same Pickens residents who routinely voted for Morris during nearly 50 years in politics — lost more than $277 million by investing in the Upstate company.

Carolina Investors and its parent company, sub-prime mortgage lender HomeGold Financial Inc., filed for bankruptcy in 2003. Investors lost 82 cents of every $1 they invested.

If Morris loses in court, he faces up to 233 years in prison and more than $1 million in fines.

Former Carolina Investors president Larry C. Owen pleaded guilty in July to 22 counts of fraud. His wife, Anne, a former vice president of the company, also faces criminal charges.

THE CASE

Morris left his last political job in 1999, after nearly 23 years as comptroller general — the job of overseeing the accounting of billions of dollars in state money.

He took the job as chairman of Carolina Investors, a four-decades-old Upstate company known for paying higher-than-average interest rates for S.C. investors.

It seemed a perfect match. Morris — a product of Pickens High School — could return to his hometown a few days a week to sit in his Carolina Investors office, complete with a wet bar and secret exit behind a bookshelf.

And Carolina Investors was paying $50,000 a year to hire a spokesman well known in state political and financial circles.

Then came the spring 2003 bankruptcy of the company and its parent, mortgage lender HomeGold Financial Inc. of Columbia. After years of using Carolina Investors money to cover its losses, HomeGold collapsed under its weight of debt.

Morris is not accused of wrongdoing in the company’s financial failure. Prosecutors claim he committed fraud by making positive statements about its finances that he knew were false.

His lawyer, Joel Collins, says Morris only passed on information he honestly believed was true. Collins says Morris was an ambassador of goodwill, and HomeGold officials kept him in the dark about its crumbling finances.

The attorney general’s team, led by Sherri Lydon, counters by saying Morris knew the company was crumbling.

The indictment claims Morris knew Carolina Investors was in a death spiral, yet he continued telling investors the company was “as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar.”

Collins also has argued the indictment is a political vendetta by Attorney General Henry McMaster, a Republican. McMaster has denied those claims.

Bill Moore, distinguished professor of political science at the College of Charleston, said the case has little to do with making or breaking McMaster’s political aspirations beyond his current job.

“The focus of the office appears much more professional and less political under McMaster,” Moore said.

REMAINING LEGACY

For Morris, all he has left to fight for is his name.

If convicted, he can expect his name to be erased from the state highway bearing his name — just as it will be washed from the collective memory of what’s good about the Upstate.

Yet in many ways Morris started fading from prominence shortly after his 1970 election as lieutenant governor.

Morris, a state senator from Pickens, was following a political trajectory aimed at the governor’s mansion.

But as he moved his political career toward the state’s highest office, his personal life was sinking. He and first wife, Jane Boroughs, divorced in 1971 in the Dominican Republic.

Yet a year later, when Morris, then 44, married Carol Telford, 20 years younger, moving into the governor’s mansion was at the forefront of their minds. At their wedding, according to a 1973 article in The State newspaper, Morris pointed to his bride’s floor-length gold-and-white brocade gown and said, “That dress will make a nice inaugural gown. Hang onto it.”

Instead, James Burrows Edwards, the first Republican since reconstruction, was elected governor in 1974. Morris finished third in the Democratic primary that year, with 80,292 votes or 25 percent of the ballots.

In 1976, Morris was appointed comptroller general — a post he would be elected to five times.

“But unlike the attorney general office or governor, it is not that high profile,” Moore said. “I wouldn’t say he was a major leader of the party.”

Morris’ tenure in state government, and as the lone Democrat constitutional officer for years, can be attributed just as much to the obscurity of his office as to his politicking, Moore said.

“Historically the performance of (fellow Democrat and state treasurer) Grady Patterson and Earle Morris did not raise eyebrows,” Moore said.

When testimony begins, Morris’ attorney will argue the performance of board chairman was similarly under the radar.

Morris claims he was never told of the impending failure of Carolina Investors. Day-to-day control of the company rested in the hands of parent company HomeGold’s directors, Collins has argued.

Morris still bemoans what he considers a lost chance to avoid bankruptcy and return the money lost by investors, his longtime supporters.

“I loved all those people,” Morris said at the September hearing in Greenville. “Some of them used to love me. Some of them still do.”

Reach Werner at (803) 771-8509 or bwerner@thestate.com.