COLOMBIA – South Carolina lawmakers sent two dozen judges to the court across the state on February 3, where they will preside over thousands of cases, from criminal appeals to evictions, over the course of their terms.
All of them were white, which generated outrage, but not surprisingly, among several black members of the General Assembly, who said that qualified candidates of color were neglected. They told the Post and the Courier that it is yet another missed opportunity for the state of Palmetto to show a commitment to diversity on the part of the upper echelons of the government.
SC Supreme Court President Donald Beatty, who is black, is in the highest state court since 2007. And of the nine judges in the state’s appeals court, the second highest, one is black. Of the current 61 supreme, appellate and circuit court judges, nine are black, or 15%. Meanwhile, about 27 percent of South Carolina’s population is black.
“We have a problem in South Carolina because we don’t have enough black judges at the bank, and that is frustrating,” said State Representative Marvin Pendarvis, R-North Charleston.
State Representative Ivory Thigpen, a Democrat from Columbia who will become president of the Black Legislative Caucus in two years, said he thinks it is critical that the judicial bench reflects the diversity of the state and that black lawmakers emphasize this to all of their colleagues.
While most court disputes have not been contested, four black women have lost or given up on disputes held at the General Assembly on February 3, despite credentials that proponents said put them on an equal footing with white candidates. South Carolina and Virginia are the only states that select judges through the legislature, and more than 120 are chosen for positions in administrative law, appeals, circuit courts and family. Lawmakers also choose state Supreme Court justices.
“The time of the black woman does not seem to have arrived in South Carolina,” said State Representative Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg. “For me, it was just a sad day.”
The highest profile dispute on the election list was a seat at the SC Circuit Court of Appeals, where DeAndrea Benjamin, a court judge who is the wife of Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin, lost to the judge of the Florence Family Court, Jay Vinson. The race was marked by attacks by Benjamin on the part of conservatives, who condemned his Democratic connections, despite Vinson’s ties to Democrats.
Had she won, Benjamin would have become the first black woman to serve on the second highest court in the state.
“I am not prepared to say that someone was racist, I am not prepared to say that racism played a role, but I am prepared to say that it doesn’t seem right and that something is going on here,” said State Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Hopkins .
House Judiciary President Chris Murphy, a North Charleston Republican who is a member of the state’s Judicial Merit Selection Committee, declined to comment on the February 3 election results.
Senate Judiciary President Luke Rankin of Conway is the chairman of the selection committee that examines judicial candidates before they go to lawmakers.
“I am proud of the ticket that we collectively advanced to the General Assembly for the election,” said Rankin. “We, of course, have not determined the final winner. This is not our task. Each candidate has the opportunity to campaign, to prevail over the majority of 169 of us on his merits and in comparison to the others. Therefore, the criticism that this was not a diverse group does not talk about the work of our committee, it talks about the strengths of each candidate ”.
Benjamin’s defeat was soon followed by that of two more black women: Spartanburg city judge Erika McJimpsey lost a place in the 7th Circuit Court family court to Angela Moss, assistant public defender in Spartanburg County and sister-in-law of the Rep. Dennis. Moss, R-Gaffney, while Lowcountry prosecutor Temeaka Legette was kept out of the 14th Judicial Circuit bench after losing to Colleton County attorney Robert Bonds.
Legette, a criminal prosecutor in the 14th Circuit Attorney’s Office since 2002, won a 2019 national leadership award from the US Attorney’s Office and helped create one of the state’s first domestic violence courts. Bonds, a lawyer for Hetrick, Harvin & Bonds, of Walterboro, has spent eight years at City Hall and has practiced law in South Carolina since 1990.
Another black woman, Stephanie Lawrence of Columbia, withdrew her name for consideration for an Administrative Law seat minutes before the General Assembly voted on February 3 because she did not have enough legislative support to win. Jackson said Lawrence was supported by most of Richland County’s legislative delegation.
“This is usually a clincher,” said Jackson. “There is no justification as to why this did not happen.”
State Representative Leon Howard, a Democrat from Columbia who chairs the Richland County legislative delegation, said the February 3 result was a setback for the state.
“This is not really new,” he said. “In 1995, when I was elected to the House of Representatives, we had little or no African American judge on the bench and, finally, we were able to make some headway. Now we are stuck to the reverse. “
In rural South Carolina, where there is a larger black population, the lack of judicial diversity can be especially problematic, said Pendarvis, who is also a lawyer.
“Although I don’t say that any member has bad intentions, I don’t think they are aware that representation is important, and we have to do our due diligence to ensure that we elect judges who look like South Carolina,” he said. “We have to do better. It says a lot about what our priorities are.”
Legislative Black Caucus President Pat Henegan, D-Bennettsville, said she was also disappointed, but is looking to the future.
The best chance that black lawmakers have to change the situation is if more of them are elected in the future, said Henegan. Then she said that they need to focus on recruiting and supporting candidates in more districts.