What’s Beyond the Headlines?

October 13, 2009: Today, we had the pleasure of being addressed by our Solicitor, for the 9th circuit, Scarlett Wilson. Scarlett was born and raised in Hemingway, South Carolina, attended Clemson University and continued on to attain her law degree at The University of South Carolina School of Law. Upon completing her education, Ms. Wilson clerked for a judge and went on to work for the US Attorney’s office. In 2001, Scarlett was appointed as interim solicitor to the 9th circuit and in 2008 was elected to her first full term in office.

During her short time in office, Scarlett says “Numbers are great. We lead the state in trial convictions, and total convictions and we have moved more murder trials than ever before!” That being said, Scarlett noted that she could spend all day on statistics but what, perhaps, would be more enlightening would be a “day in the life” so to speak, a bird’s eye view into the daily challenges of our legal system. To illustrate, Ms. Wilson used the following example: In 2001 a case was investigated where a young woman was coming home from work, on the phone with a friend, when a gun was put to her head and a man began demanding money. The victim was then beaten with a gun, raped and dragged into the woods to die. The woman later awoke, made her way to her apartment and called for help. She gave a statement to the police, provided DNA samples and pictures to authorities, but there were no suspects! Fast forward, five years later a man is being released from prison for a separate crime, a DNA test was required and run through the system, he was a match. For a solicitor this is a “slam dunk” case, you have a victim, a witness and good evidence, but when the state contacted the victim she “had moved on, she was engaged to be married, and was not willing to go to trial”. Our solicitor contacted her parents, they begged that she not pressure their daughter who was “finally making progress, and was so fragile” as Scarlett said, “What do you do?” There are hard decisions to be made, in the end, after much negotiation, the solicitor’s office made a deal sending the offender to jail for 15 years, and the potential to be committed for the rest of his life (because he is violent sexual predator). Scarlett pointed out that the news paper headline on this case may have read “solicitor makes deal with rapist for 15 years”, but the other option was dragging this victim and her family through a trial that she did not think she could bare. Ms. Wilson, ask of us, as leaders to ask more questions, what else is there to the story? Scarlett also said “I recognize that I work for you, and I welcome individual questions, there are certainly conversations that I can have one on one with a citizen that I would not have with the press”. The solicitor went on to explain that often times information is kept confidential to protect a case, it is most important to protect the case and preserve the right to appeal, and the state is much more likely to be affected by that than a defense attorney.

During question and answer, Ms. Wilson briefly discussed the mayor’s legislation in regards to searching prisoners on parole, she is in favor of the bill, the bill allows our officers to search prisoners who are serving the rest of their terms on our streets, and if they were in prison we could search their cell daily. Scarlett Wilson’s office is working diligently to clean up our streets, but she must have the support of the community to do so!

Reported by Elizabeth Wooten Buwell, Keyway Committee