COLOMBIA – A former city councilman from Columbia should not have been suspended by the governor in 2017 after an arrest for domestic violence, a lawyer argued before the state’s highest court on Wednesday, questioning the seriousness of the allegation against the councilor and the governor’s authority to take action against him.
More than four years ago, then Columbia City Councilor Moe Baddourah was arrested and charged with assaulting his then wife in an incident in the parking lot of a local restaurant.
Although this criminal case was resolved a long time ago – and Baddourah is no longer on the city council – the legal consequences of the prosecution are still shaking the court system, courtesy of a lawsuit that Baddourah filed in 2017 in an attempt to be reinstated to the council after being suspended by Governor Henry McMaster. The case’s arguments were heard on Wednesday before the South Carolina Supreme Court.
And while the court’s potential decision on the matter should not send Baddourah back to the council, it can set precedents for similar cases in the future.
Baddourah sued McMaster in March 2017, after the governor suspended him when he was indicted for misdemeanor for second-degree criminal domestic violence. That charge came from an incident in June 2016 in the parking lot of the Rockaway Athletic Club restaurant on Rosewood Drive. Baddourah was accused of hitting his then wife with a car door during an argument.
At the time of the suspension, McMaster said in an executive order that he considered the second-degree domestic violence charge to be “a crime of moral turpitude”, the legal definition he needed to come up with to suspend Baddourah. The councilman later sued in an attempt to be readmitted.
The councilman was suspended for a year and a half. In September 2018, he entered pre-trial intervention in the case and the charge was finally dropped. He returned to the council the following month, but was defeated by Will Brennan in the 2019 elections.
In Tuesday’s presentation before the Supreme Court, Baddourah’s lawyer, Toby Ward, presented some arguments for which Baddourah should not have been suspended.
Firstly, the crime he was accused of has not reached the level of “moral turpitude” and, secondly, as a member of the Columbia City Council, Baddourah is technically a member of the government’s legislative branch, and McMaster has no authority to suspend it.
In his order to suspend Baddourah, McMaster said that state law observes moral turpitude “implies something immoral in itself” and that a crime of moral turpitude “involves an act of vileness, vileness or depravity in the social duties that a man owes to your fellow man or society in general. ”
Ward argued that there may be “political flywheel” concerns if the governor exercises moral turpitude in a “vague and nebulous” way to suspend a council member.
“We think that what we should do is not to take the outlier approach, which would be that any crime of domestic violence is a crime a moral turpitude,” said Ward.
He said that applying moral turpitude to the suspension of an elected official should be reserved for “the most serious offenses”.
Court President Donald Beatty lobbied Ward on whether criminal domestic violence could be considered a serious offense. The lawyer admitted that it could be in certain circumstances, but that the governor should review the facts of an indictment before determining whether an officer should be suspended.
“I am saying that criminal domestic violence, alleged in isolation, should not automatically be a crime of moral turpitude, end of the investigation,” said Ward.
Attorney Thomas Limehouse, representing McMaster, noted that the governor had revised the charge against Baddourah. The governor also relied on the opinion of the state attorney general, Alan Wilson, to make the decision to suspend the councilman.
“He looked at the prosecution,” said Limehouse. “It was provided to the governor and also to the attorney general for review by the attorney general, confirming the governor’s opinion. But I don’t think this court needs to follow the path of a categorical versus modified categorical analysis to determine whether domestic violence is high school. it is in all cases a crime involving moral turpitude. Here, as claimed in the indictment, it certainly was. “
Among other things, the prosecution in the Baddourah case accused him of “assaulting (his then wife) a car door, an act that would likely result in moderate bodily injury”.
Baddourah did not testify before the court on Wednesday.
Ward also argued that Baddourah was a member of the legislative branch of the government in South Carolina and noted that the governor has no authority under the state constitution to suspend members of that branch. He states that, according to state autonomy legislation, the General Assembly grants certain legislative powers to municipal governments.
Limehouse countered that the state constitution defines the state legislative department as having two distinct branches – the state House of Representatives and the state Senate. He stressed that Baddourah was a member of the city council, and not a member of either of these bodies.
The Supreme Court will issue a decision at a later date.