By Tony Kukulich
Beaufort County Council has stopped funding a pilot program that transferred nearly $200,000 a year to the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office for the prosecution of driving under the influence (DUI) cases in the county.
The general counsel for the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, Daniel F. Gourley II, will now prosecute DUI cases and any other criminal charges brought by the Sheriff’s Office that are tried in Beaufort County Magistrate Court.
“Starting today, July 11, all of those DUI cases and all magistrate court cases have been dumped in Daniel’s lap,” said Beaufort County Sheriff P. J. Tanner.
South Carolina is one of only three states in which law enforcement officers are required to serve as both the prosecutor and witness in low-level criminal and traffic-offense prosecutions tried in magistrate court. In many instances, particularly in DUI cases, officers with little legal training square off against trained and experienced defense attorneys.
“We’re one of three states that has that practice, and it’s a bad practice,” said 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone. “This is an issue throughout South Carolina.”
During the June 13 county council meeting, District 10 Councilmember Larry McElynn, explained that the pilot program, which was started in 2020, was intended to provide a solicitor to prosecute DUI cases, thus removing that responsibility from law enforcement. The county paid $187,000 a year for three years and produced results that were ultimately unsatisfactory to the council.
“I was informed in early May that there are 340 DUI cases that have not been prosecuted in Beaufort County alone,” McElynn said. “Some are going as far back as 2019. When called to ask about progress in early June, I was told that 10 cases had been disposed of over the four weeks. It will take three years at the current pace to prosecute these cases if no new citations are issued. If we provided the $187,000 this year, that would be $748,000 over (four) years to a program that appears to have failed.”
Tanner suggested that a lack of focus contributed to failure of the pilot program, though there were other factors including disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I know the coronavirus didn’t help,” he said. “I will admit that threw a curveball that no one was expecting. If the coronavirus hadn’t interrupted the judicial system as badly as it did, the outcome could have been a little bit different.”
As the backlog of DUI cases grew, Tanner was in the process of hiring an attorney to serve as general counsel for his department. Gourley started in that role in November 2021, coming from a background in the Solicitor’s Office. Early in his tenure, Gourley recognized the burden that prosecuting cases puts on deputies and offered to take on that responsibility.
“The deputies are not only tasked with investigating and making an arrest, but they’re also tasked in magistrate court with prosecuting their own cases, which is an incredible burden,” Gourley said. “To be a witness and a prosecutor at the same time is next to impossible. Couple that with the fact that they don’t necessarily have a law background outside of what they do on a daily basis. Going up against a defense attorney with 10, 15 or 20 years of experience – it’s just not a fair fight.”
Stone said that a prosecutor must be appointed by either the solicitor or the attorney general. To that end, Tanner sent Stone a letter in February requesting that Gourley be granted special permission to prosecute cases in magistrate court.
“It’s not anything really new,” Stone said. “It’s new for the Sheriff’s Office, but it’s something that we’ve done, and that I think solicitors have done throughout the state – appoint special prosecutors to handle these magistrate court cases so the police officers don’t have to prosecute the cases themselves.”
Over several months, Tanner, Stone and Gourley met to iron out the details of the arrangement, and about a month ago, Stone granted the permission Tanner sought.
“Our position now is, where Daniel is general counsel, we need to hire one attorney to work under him for DUI prosecution, and all other magistrate court prosecutions,” Tanner said. “He would oversee that operation, and he would also take a caseload himself.”
The $187,000 that was originally planned to go to the Solicitor’s Office in the 2022-2023 budget was removed from the budget after McElynn put forth a motion during the June 13 council meeting. Tanner plans to make a supplemental budget request by the end of the month that will fund the hiring of an attorney to prosecute DUI cases.
“Our general counsel and other attorneys that we hire are going to focus on DUI cases,” Tanner said. I think if we level the playing field and make it fair, we’re going to send a message, not only to those that have been charged, but those that habitually offend the DUI statute in South Carolina, that we’re taking this seriously; we’re going to create a deterrence; we’re going to hold you accountable and we’re going to do it in a very timely fashion.”
Tony Kukulich is a recent transplant to the Lowcountry. A native of Wilmington, Del., he comes to The Island News from the San Francisco Bay Area where he spent seven years as a reporter and photographer for several publications. He can be reached at tony.theislandnews@gmail.com.
