COLOMBIA – South Carolina’s attorney general sent four unsolved corruption cases at the Statehouse to a Republican prosecutor in Spartanburg County to take care of it.
The state Supreme Court ruled in January that a Democratic prosecutor, David Pascoe of Orangeburg, exceeded his authority by continuing his investigation of corruption at the Statehouse beyond the few cases that Attorney General Alan Wilson gave him because of a possible conflict of interest. interests.
The judges left it to Wilson to decide what to do. He handed the cases over to an assistant, who in a letter this week asked Seventh Circuit attorney Barry Barnette to take over the remaining four cases.
The cases include perjury and obstruction of justice charges against political consultant Richard Quinn Sr. Authorities said he lied to a state jury during the investigation.
Wilson used Quinn for political work for years. Quinn’s son, former state deputy Richard Quinn Jr., pleaded guilty to misconduct in the post and was sentenced to probation for receiving $ 4 million in money from lobbyists and fulfilling his bids for the Quinns consulting business. .
The other cases involve the conviction of former South Carolina senator John Courson of Columbia, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to wrongdoing for using thousands of dollars of political contributions for personal use; and misconduct trials against former representatives Tracy Edge of North Myrtle Beach and Jim Harrison of Columbia. They are all Republicans and have worked with the Quinns.
The state Supreme Court dismissed Pascoe’s cases in a clearly divided 3-2 ruling that the Orangeburg prosecutor should not have continued an investigation by the state grand jury on corruption in addition to specific legislators that the attorney general asked the Pascoe’s office to sue.
The corruption investigation at the Statehouse began seven years ago as an investigation into former Mayor Bobby Harrell, who pleaded guilty to spending campaign money on personal expenses. He was sentenced to parole.
The two-page letter delivering the cases to Barnette offered to pay any hotel or travel expenses for the new prosecutor. But Deputy Attorney General W. Jeffrey Young also included a warning.
“In the event that your investigation or review of the case leads to new charges against new defendants, inform this Office about the matter so that we can decide how to proceed,” wrote Young.
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Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.