By Scott Graber
It is Saturday, and I’m sipping my Green Mountain, hazelnut-flavored coffee. This morning’s Post and Courier tells us about the Dockside Condominium in Charleston; and the Yachtsman Hotel in Myrtle Beach.
Dockside, according to the City of Charleston, is unsound and ready to “pancake” down into a mountain of rubble. The glass-sheathed Yachtsman is being converted from a regular hotel into a condominium with multiple owners.
Both structures represent an expensive, elevated view that allows one to extend one’s gaze across several miles of open water. There is something magical about staring into a distant horizon with a cup of coffee and, say, an almond flavored croissant.
On the morning of June 18, 2025, I did not have a view of the marsh, the Beaufort River or the Cane Island shore-line in the distance. My view was a white painted wall, six bunk beds, three sleeping inmates and a stainless steel toilet.
My bunk came with a blue plastic covering that featured a crusted coating I did not see (the night before); but when I woke my cellmate said, “Boss, you slept in shit last night.”
But, actually, I didn’t do any sleeping that night because I had been arrested earlier, handcuffed, then taken to the Beaufort County Detention Center.
The scene inside the Detention Center was chaotic.
Stunned, just-arrested detainees were being brought in and processed amid a background of constant screaming from a nearby holding cell.
That screaming, strangely amplified, followed me into a small alcove where the fingerprinting was to occur. But something was wrong. The young deputy repeatedly mashed-down the back of my palms using all of her strength to get an image. Nonetheless there was a signal saying that her mashing efforts had failed.
When it came time for a mug shot I tried to smile — I am a retired 80-year-old lawyer and I am familiar with mug shots showing despair and shame.
“Get that smile off your face!”
Then, of course, there was the removal of one’s clothes and being told to bend over and reveal one’s buttocks.
The next morning I looked down at a floor covered with mashed-up cookies, discarded plastic dinnerware and other debris I could not identify. The cookies, Oreos, are a favorite and I was perplexed that anyone would discard them.
At 5:30 a.m., we were given a meal that came on a gray, plastic tray with compartments for the breakfast fare — the same kind of tray used in grade school cafeterias — one of the slots holding a circular, gray and yellow egg-like item that I did not eat.
My cellmates and I waited — without a book or television talk show — for four hours awaiting a bond hearing that did happen at 10 a.m. However, we were not released until 3 p.m., spending another five hours in a small space filled with despair.
The last couple of hours of our incarceration were spent in the Reception Area trying to get ourselves processed out. While we were waiting in a large holding cell, we noticed another inmate lying on the floor covered with a piece of plastic. He, like us, was being processed out but was unresponsive when called for his departure photograph.
One of my cellmates — seeing this man and sensing something was wrong, got him up and off the floor and over to the photography area. But the detention deputy — holding a camera — could not photograph this man’s face and hold his head up at the same time. My three cellmates, showing the only compassion that was evident in this place at this moment, held him up for his photograph so he could depart with the rest of us.
As I sat and watched all of this my mind took me back to Jan. 23, 1979, when I was in the Beaufort County Jail with my coffee — prepared by a trustee — and sitting with John Arnold.
Arnold had been accused of murdering a young woman, Betty Gardner, and his trial was to commence at 10 a.m. I then represented Arnold and had brought him a blue, oxford-cloth shirt and a knit tie to wear into the courtroom. I thought it was important to get him out of his jumpsuit and into some kind of garb that didn’t scream “Mad Dog” — the appellation used by the Solicitor.
In those days I felt no claustrophobia, despair, or the sense that I lacked a view of the river.
June 17, 2025
On the evening of June 17, 2025, my wife and I had dinner at Scratch — an Italian restaurant in Shell Point where we shared a salad and a plate of thinly sliced carpaccio. I also had two glasses of a Pinot Noir, a northern Italian vintage called Castelfeder, Susan having a single glass of a Tuscan Red.
We left Scratch a little after 8 p.m., en route to our pale blue, two-storied house on 9th Street in Port Royal. We traveled South on Madrid Avenue in our Honda Fit and as I made a left turn onto 9th, I may have strayed into the left lane of traffic. As we were pulling into our yard a police SUV materialized and suddenly our neighborhood was bathed in a pulsing blue and red light.
I was given what is called a “field sobriety test” — a FST in police parlance — that involved following the officer’s index finger with my eyes. Then the young man asked me to recite the alphabet.
It is my recollection that I said something like, “I can’t say the alphabet backwards,” and it is my further recollection that the officer said something like, “Well, start at D and go to M.” (All of this was captured on a video.)
What was not captured on video is whether or not there was a jerking movement in my eyes when I was asked to look left (and right) at a 45 degree angle. The Horizontal Gaze Nystagamus (HGN) test is widely used in South Carolina but, as far as I can tell, there is no way to video-verify what the officer reports.
In the case of State v. Gordon (2015) our Appeals Court said that the “HGN field sobriety test had very little probative value to a jury because the eyes of the motorist were rarely, if ever, seen.”
The “alphabet test” is not approved by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) because there doesn’t appear to be any scientific connection between saying the alphabet and the driver’s alleged impairment.
But, according to the arresting officer, I failed these tests and the officer said he was arresting me for Driving Under the Influence. Thereafter, my wrists cuffed behind my back, I was put into the back seat of his cruiser and “transported” to the Beaufort County Detention Center.
At the Detention Center I was placed inside a small room that was separated from another small room by a large sheet of hard plastic. A circular hole cut into the plastic allowed me to lean forward and talk with the officer. He asked me if I wanted to take a Breathalyzer Test.
I wasn’t sure.
I wasn’t sure because some of my friends are DUI-focused lawyers. They have told me over the years that one should refuse the test. And so I hesitated — all of this discussion is on tape — but in the end I agreed and blew my aging breath into a black plastic tube that snaked through the hole in the plastic.
That ragged blast of breath registered a blood alcohol concentration of three one-hundredths of one percent. I did not know it then, but I would later discover that Section 56-5-2950(G)(1) says: “If the alcohol concentration was at that time five one-hundredths of one percent or less, it is conclusively presumed the person was not under the influence of alcohol.”
At that point I was processed into the Beaufort County Detention Center where I spent the worst night of my life.
“Why,” I wondered, “was I plunged into this place when I was ‘conclusively presumed’ to be sober?”
After my release (from the Detention Center) I hired a lawyer, Scott Lee, who is conversant with Code Section 56-5-2950 et. seq., and who worked tirelessly in my behalf.
However, I must give special thanks to my 9th Street neighbor, Kit Bruce, who witnessed the arrest and ran into the blue-and-red-lighted scene trying to convince the arresting officer that I was not drunk. Later, this same wonderful neighbor called the Mayor, Kevin Phillips, and that encounter set off a series of events that, I’m sure, helped my cause.
Thanks to Scott Lee and Kit Bruce the Town of Port Royal would drop the charges against me. Nonetheless I continued to wonder why my arrest, and my detention, commenced after the Breathalyzer revealed I was “conclusively” not impaired at the time of my arrest?
Aftermath
What happened next — and what profoundly helped with my anger — was the fact that I was called by Mayor Phillips who asked if I would discuss all of these matters with the newly appointed Chief of Police, Jeff Meyers.
Chief Meyers and I met at Corner Perk in Port Royal — we both ordered coffee and for a time we talked about the Cleveland Browns. Chief Meyers comes from Cleveland and, as a young boy, I decided the Browns would be the professional team I would follow and cheer for.
For most of my life I have regretted that decision.
Prior to getting into the substance of my arrest Chief Meyers asked if I would be talking to him as a journalist, or as a lawyer, or as a recently arrested individual. In answering that question I said I was still having conflicting, pinball-like emotions involving my 45-year-long love affair with the Town of Port Royal and the resentment from my arrest and my subsequent detention.
I told him I had been the Town Attorney; the Chair of the Municipal Planning Commission; the Town’s representative on the Water and Sewer Authority. I told him I was proud of the things that Port Royal had accomplished over the years and I appreciated the fact I had been given a small role in that growth. At the end of that self-serving litany I said I would not quote him directly.
But I will generally relate that the topics of our conversation dealt with the officer in question, the field sobriety tests, and, importantly, the officer’s decision to put me into the Detention Center after my .03 BAC reading — conclusive evidence I was not drunk.
Chief Meyers indicated the arresting officer can’t rule-out opioids, or barbiturates, or other drugs as being the intoxicating culprit. So protocols or procedure require the arresting officer transport the detained driver to the Beaufort County Hospital for a blood test to confirm his or her suspicions about drugs.
But, in my case, the arresting officer didn’t do that. He (apparently) decided it wasn’t necessary. I went straight into the tank.
According to Attorney Scott Lee, there have been Port Royal arrests of two other persons — one who registered an .02 BAC and another who registered a .00 Blood Alcohol Concentration — who were put into the Detention Center without a trip to the hospital.
That, according to the Chief, won’t happen again.
Now anyone arrested (for DUI) will also go to the hospital. The problem, Chief Meyers explained, is that the department won’t get the blood test results for a couple of weeks. Hence a continuing uncertainty about sobriety. But, one way or the other, it’s back to the Detention Center.
I won’t repeat what I wrote about my night in the Detention Center. But will confirm that process involves humiliation, the stripping away of one’s dignity and, of course, shame. There is the tangible presumption of guilt attached to these proceedings, not innocence. It is “punishment” before any final determination of guilt.
Beaufort County doesn’t require the presence of a magistrate (at the Detention Center) in the afternoon or in the evening — he or she shows up the next morning and sets bail that facilitates one’s release. Anyone arrested during the late morning, afternoon or evening will not be processed until the following day. If one is arrested for an alleged DUI after 10 p.m., one is going to get an all-expenses paid night in the Beaufort County Detention Center.
In my days as a criminal defense lawyer I had the opportunity to repeatedly “tour” the Beaufort County Jail and, on a couple of occasions, the Central Correction Institute in Columbia. Never did I feel the humiliation, the sense of guilt or shame like I felt as I lay on my bunk during the night of June 17, 2025.
Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.
