| A shocking arrest The arrest Thursday of South Carolina Agriculture Commissioner Charles Sharpe on federal extortion and money-laundering charges in connection with Aiken County cockfighting came as a shock to those who know and worked with him for many years when he was the state representative from Wagener. If Sharpe is convicted, the 12-count federal indictment - to which he has pleaded not guilty - could land him in prison for several decades and cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. The indictment also must be terribly embarrassing to his family, which includes his highly respected wife, Aiken County Treasurer Linda Sharpe. However, Gov. Mark Sanford was right to promptly suspend the longtime Aiken-area Republican from the state's top agriculture post that he won two years ago. An indictment, of course, is not a conviction, but until or unless there is an acquittal, an indictment is a stain on the accused - a stain that, fairly or not, rubs off on the office that an elected officeholder holds. That's not fair to the public, which has a right to expect every public office is being run at all times by an honest public official. The charges against Sharpe are serious. They involve extortion, money-laundering and lying to investigators. He allegedly used his position as a state lawmaker, and later as agriculture commissioner, to extract money from a Spartanburg-based cockfighting group that did some business in Aiken County. He's also accused of diverting legal and illegal contributions from the group to his personal use and lying about it to investigators. Whether Sharpe is guilty of wrongdoing or not, the fact that he was a high state official with connections to cockfighting is troubling enough in itself. It's deplorable that the state's commissioner of agriculture would not only welcome the support of such unsavory elements, but also allegedly benefit from such associations. Cockfighting is illegal for a reason. It's a cruel and bloody spectacle that has no place in a civilized society. It attracts criminals and lowlifes, the kind of human vermin who assault their wives and beat their children, who can't tell the difference between sport and barbarism, or kindness and cruelty. These are not the kind of people a public official, or any decent person with half a brain, should have anything to do with, much less be working to bring their blood-sport into the state. To the contrary, the cockfighting crowd should be shunned at every turn.
|