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Solicitors, attorney general butt heads
Group opposes plan for handling criminal domestic violence cases
By RICK BRUNDRETT
Staff Writer
The S.C. Solicitors Association has rejected state Attorney General Henry McMaster’s plan to put a prosecutor in every county to concentrate on criminal domestic violence cases in magistrate courts.
Instead, the association wants solicitors to decide how to use their share of the proposed $2.2 million in state money.
“The strong feeling of our group is that each solicitor knows and understands the needs of domestic violence prosecution better than anyone else,” said 15th Circuit Solicitor Greg Hembree, the association president.
The association approved its budget proviso proposal Thursday and forwarded it to the House Ways and Means law enforcement subcommittee, scheduled to vote Tuesday .
On Friday, McMaster called the association’s proposal “an unacceptable posture.”
He said if the subcommittee doesn’t approve his plan for one CDV prosecutor per county, he will ask that the $2.2 million be appropriated to his office instead of through the state Commission on Prosecution Coordination, as he originally proposed.
The prosecution commission provides state money to the state’s 16 solicitors. If the $2.2 million is given to the attorney general’s office, McMaster said he would hire and assign the prosecutors.
“We’ll make it work,” McMaster said. “We can make a grand start with it.”
State Rep. Annette Young, R-Dorchester, chairwoman of the three-member Ways and Means subcommittee, said Thursday she wanted to review the association’s proposal before deciding her vote. But she was sympathetic to solicitors’ concerns.
“I cannot disagree that they need more flexibility,” she said.
Under the association’s proposal, the $2.2 million would be divided equally among the state’s 16 judicial circuits, or $137,500 per circuit. McMaster’s plan calls for the money to be divided equally among the state’s 46 counties, or $47,826 per county.
Because circuits range in size from two to five counties, some would receive more money and some less under the association’s proposal. The three most populated circuits — Greenville, Charleston and Columbia — would receive more.
Hembree’s circuit includes Horry and Georgetown counties. He said that under the association’s proposal, solicitors could decide to hire prosecutors to handle domestic violence cases solely in circuit courts.
He noted that under a tougher domestic violence law approved last year, second-offense cases now must go initially to circuit courts.
McMaster said prosecutors first should be added to the state’s magistrate courts, where victims typically don’t have a lawyer to represent them. He contends that magistrate-court conviction rates would improve with prosecutors.
McMaster said he is willing to compromise on how the $2.2 million is divided up. But he won’t budge on where the additional prosecutors should be assigned.
Reach Brundrett at (803) 771-8484 or rbrundrett@thestate.com.
