Editorial Roundup: South Carolina

By Associated Press|Jan. 27, 2022By Associated Press|Jan. 27, 2022, at 1:56 p.m.

By The Associated Press

Post & Courier. January 26, 2022.

Editorial: End special privileges for SC lawyer-legislators and their clients

S.C. Chief Justice Don Beatty couldn’t have come up with a better way to illustrate how easily lawyer-legislators can give their clients an unfair advantage in court if he had set out to do just that.

By restricting that power and then yanking back that restriction the next day, he simultaneously appeared to demonstrate what inappropriate power lawyer-legislators have over our court system — as if we needed another illustration.

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Now that the chief’s flip-flop has emboldened critics to speak openly and made the miscarriages of justice that result from the 21-year-old special treatment provision more widely known among the general public and non-lawyers in the Legislature, the question is what, if anything, Justice Beatty and the Legislature are going to do about it.

Hold that thought while we recap what’s been going on in our courts since 2001, when then-Chief Justice Jean Toal issued an order forbidding judges from requiring lawyer-legislators to appear in court during the six months a year the Legislature is generally in session. Her order made an exception for “extraordinary circumstances” where “substantial rights of the parties to the litigation will be defeated or severely abridged by the delay, or where the litigation involves emergency relief and irreparable damage.”

It’s not unreasonable to remove some barriers to lawyers serving in the Legislature, because we need to have people who understand the law writing our laws. But there’s a limit to what is reasonable, and nine years after that initial order, Justice Toal probably passed that limit when she replaced the exception with what she called “absolute protection” from legislators having to appear in court during the legislative session. She also said lawyer-legislators could pick and choose, showing up in court to represent this client but not that one — and even to represent that client at one stage of the process and not another.

That meant they could represent their clients when it was in their clients’ interest to do so — like, say, when they were trying to convince the judge to let a client out on bail. And they could insist that hearings be delayed when that was in their client’s best interest — say, when their clients were out on bail awaiting trial — particularly if the client out on bail committed another crime and the prosecutor wanted bail revoked.

Justice Beatty took action this past summer to extend that “absolute immunity” year-round because the Legislature was planning to work through the fall; he rescinded the extension on Jan. 11, the day the Legislature convened the 2022 session. And in an extraordinary move, he attempted to restore some sanity to the special treatment, writing that judges could require lawyer-legislators to appear in court just like any other lawyer in a handful of cases where victims or the public could be put at risk by the delay. Those cases involve bail revocation hearings, emergency family court hearings involving children, criminal cases in magistrate and municipal court where the complaints had been lingering for more than 18 months and circuit court criminal cases that had been lingering for three years.

That reform lasted precisely one day. A spokeswoman told The Post and Courier’s Avery Wilks and Glenn Smith that the chief justice put the exceptions on hold Jan. 12 because lawyers and court officials complained that it could be dangerous to hold trials during the COVID-19 surge.

Editorial Roundup: South Carolina

That’s a strange explanation, given that state courts are open after being closed during the early part of the pandemic and that the order allowed rather than required judges to call lingering cases. It makes even less sense when you consider that one week later, on Wednesday, the spokeswoman told our editorial staff that Justice Beatty had since told judges they could schedule bond revocation hearings involving lawyer-legislators’ clients on Mondays and Fridays, the days the Legislature generally does not meet. That might be the most urgent part of the Jan. 11 order, but it’s certainly not the only part.

It’s hard to ignore the fact that lawyer-legislators have ample opportunity to exercise outsize influence over the court because non-attorneys in the Legislature often defer to them on matters involving the court. That means even the most well-meaning chief justice has to consider the possibility that his actions will make some legislators want to exact retribution on the judicial system.

Even if that wasn’t a factor, the official explanation suggests that lawyer-legislators have been abusing their privilege to a much greater extent than we imagined. It also suggests that before last year, judges had not been routinely doing what they should have been doing when lawyer-legislators demanded delays: immediately scheduling their cases to begin the following August.

We respect the court’s right to decide for itself how to schedule cases. But the Legislature has a right to insist that the judiciary not carve out a special class of attorneys whose clients automatically receive special treatment, and this month’s events suggest that the Legislature has an obligation to do that.

The Legislature needs to work with the chief justice to find a way to eliminate or significantly scale back such special treatment. And unless it is eliminated entirely, legislators need to shine perpetual light on it, by requiring lawyer-legislators to publicly report all cases where court action is delayed because of this special protection. Prosecutors and judges should be required to report all those cases as well, as a double-check.

We might discover that only a handful of legislators are abusing this privilege — or we might discover it’s a widespread problem. Either way, that will give voters the information they need to determine whether or not their legislators are enriching themselves at the expense of public safety and a fair judicial system.

And it will give the Legislature the data it needs to better police how individual lawyer-legislators benefit personally from their positions.

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Times and Democrat. January 24, 2022.

Editorial: Putting brakes on robocalls a top priority

If you answer the phone and hear a recorded message instead of a live person, it’s a robocall.

If you’re getting a lot of robocalls trying to sell you something, odds are the calls are illegal. Many are also probably scams.

Seniors are primary targets for fraudsters, accounting for 38% of scams. Estimates are that 5 million cases of elder fraud annually result in $27.4 billion in losses.

S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson has been among those combating robocalls.

Most recently, Wilson urged the Federal Communications Commission to put in place measures that will help stem the tide of foreign-based illegal robocalls that attempt to scam Americans. A letter to the FCC was signed by the attorneys general of all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

“Robocalls are one of the most aggravating nuisances on earth. I’ve received half a dozen myself just in the last two days,” Attorney General Wilson said Jan. 11 via press release. “Many of them are coming from other countries, so we need the Federal Communications Commission to take action because there’s nothing we can do as individual states.”

Wilson and the other attorneys general are calling for the FCC to require gateway providers -- the companies that allow foreign calls into the United States--- to take steps to reduce how easily robocalls have been able to enter the U.S. telephone network, including implementing STIR/SHAKEN, a caller ID authentication technology that helps prevent spoofed calls.

Gateway providers should be required to implement this technology within 30 days of it becoming a rule to help eliminate spoofed calls and to make sure that international calls that originate from U.S. telephone numbers are legitimate, the attorneys general say

In December, Wilson and the other AGs helped persuade the FCC to shorten by a year the deadline for smaller telephone companies to implement STIR/SHAKEN.

The attorneys general are asking the FCC to require these gateway providers to take additional measures to reduce robocalls, including:

—Responding to requests from law enforcement, state attorneys genera, or the FCC to trace back calls within 24 hours.

—Blocking calls when providers are aware of an illegal or likely fraudulent caller.

—Blocking calls that originate from numbers that are on a “do not originate” list -- such as government phone numbers that are for incoming calls only.

—Ensuring that foreign telephone companies they partner with are ensuring that calls are being made from legitimate numbers.

The attorneys general are also encouraging the FCC to require all phone companies to block calls from a gateway provider if it fails to meet these requirements.

Still, no one expects robocalls to go away completely. So it remains important that people are aware that the calls are schemes. Here are ways consumers can avoid becoming victims:

—Hang up the phone. Don’t press one to speak to a live operator. And don’t press any other number to get off the list. If you respond by pressing any number, it will probably just lead to more robocalls.

—Look out for calls and messages pretending to be from well-known organizations like the IRS. Fraudsters may try to get you to verify information like your bank account number, Social Security number or credit card information. Never give private information to someone who contacts you out of the blue.

—No legitimate business/agency will ask for unusual forms of payment. Unusual forms of payment include gift card, cryptocurrency or wire transfer. Scammers like these forms of payment because they are difficult to trace and you’ll likely never see that money again. No matter why the person says they need it, this is a big red flag.

—Report the call to the S.C. Department of Consumer Affairs by calling 844-835-5322 or by visiting www.consumer.sc.gov, then clicking Report a Scam.

END

Tags: South Carolina, Associated Press

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