If you want to challenge the results of your conviction, your attorney could explore post-conviction relief for you in the trial court where your case was originally heard.
When you file as the “applicant,” the court will approve a new attorney to assist in showing that you had an unfair trial.
Some types of violent crime are rising in South Carolina and across the country, according to the 2019 National Crime Victimization Survey. The report was issued by the Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics. Researchers asked people if they were victims of crimes, regardless of whether the incidents were reported to police or other officials. Around 150,000 households and 240,000 individuals are surveyed each year, and the reports consistently show that less than half of all crimes are reported to police. Many crimes involve people who know each other, and victims may be hesitant to turn to authorities.
The FBI also releases a crime report each year that shows lower numbers than the DOJ study. However, the FBI report relies primarily on police department statistics and thus measures reported and prosecuted crimes rather than criminal activity overall. In particular, reports of rape and sexual assault rose in the 2018 survey. In 2017, 1.4 people of every 1,000 told DOJ researchers they had been victims in the past year. That number rose to 2.7 out of 1,000 in the 2018 report, a statistically significant jump.
A South Carolina jury deliberated for a little over three hours Aug. 27 before finding a 24-year-old man guilty of the 2014 murder of Lexington County teenager. The judge then sentenced the man to the state mandatory minimum of 30 years in prison. He was given a prison credit of five years because he has been under house arrest since 2014. The case drew widespread media attention because the killing occurred after teens from rival high schools became embroiled in an argument following a basketball game.
The jury heard how the 17-year-old victim died minutes after suffering a stab wound to the chest in a restaurant parking lot. In a previous trial that ended in a hung jury, the man claimed that he acted in self-defense. He chose to not take the stand during his retrial. Police officers did testify, and they told the jury that the man fled the scene, buried the murder weapon in a neighbor's yard and washed his clothes as soon as he arrived home.
Online privacy is a hot-button issue in South Carolina and around the country, and technology companies have been dragged over the coals by the media when they have sold confidential information to unscrupulous third parties or allowed malicious hackers to gain access to it. However, the ease with which law enforcement agencies can obtain personal information from social media companies and online service providers has prompted little in the way of outrage.
Technology companies have sometimes paid a heavy price for placing civil rights over public safety. In 2016, Apple faced a barrage of public and media criticism for refusing to help the FBI gain access to an iPhone owned by one of the perpetrators of the San Bernardino mass shooting. Technology companies hoping to avoid such a problem may feel that turning over data quietly is far more prudent. Lawmakers have also been quiet on this issue. Police are only required to obtain a search warrant to access personal data in California, Utah and Washington.
South Carolina residents facing federal drug charges can potentially face a wide range of penalties, should those charges ultimately lead to convictions. Some of those penalties can have far-reaching effects on their personal and professional lives. If you are among those facing a federal drug charge and you are also a current recipient of financial aid, it is critical that you understand how a federal drug conviction could affect you.
While a federal drug conviction can leave you facing time in jail, steep financial penalties and other serious repercussions, it can also impact your ability to get financial assistance for schooling. This is also true of drug convictions that come at the state level, and both types of drug convictions can potentially hinder your academic and professional future.
Juries in South Carolina and around the country tend to find eyewitness testimony extremely persuasive, and this is especially true when witnesses are able to identify criminal defendants with confidence. However, the way that police departments conduct suspect lineups and the inner workings of the human brain can sometimes make witnesses seem far more confident in court than they were when they made the initial identification.
Researchers who have studied eyewitness identifications discovered that the conditions in which lineups are conducted can greatly influence their outcome. Lineup conditions are considered pristine when the officer conducting the lineup does not know who the suspect is and the suspect does not stand out from other members of the lineup in any meaningful way. These conditions can be extremely difficult to replicate in a busy police station, and conducting a pristine lineup may be impossible if the suspect has a distinctive appearance.
Let us say that law enforcement arrested you on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs, specifically marijuana, after you T-boned another vehicle at an intersection.
You are a college student, and this is your first offense. You do not know what to expect or how a conviction will affect your future.
There are many kinds of fraud and they are classified as a white collar crime.
One example of this sort of criminal activity is insurance fraud, which is on the rise in South Carolina. What exactly is insurance fraud? Could a judge find you guilty of such a crime?
South Carolina residents may be interested to learn that over 3,000 individuals will be released from the custody of the Bureau of Prisons starting in late July 2019. The release is meant to comply with the conditions of the First Step Act, a criminal reform act passed by Congress in 2018.
Most of those who will be released have been in halfway houses across the United States and were convicted of drug-related crimes. An estimated 900 individuals who are set to be released may be detained by immigration officials or local authorities. An additional 250 people who are terminally ill or elderly are also set to be released into compassionate-release programs that allow home confinement.
A 33-year-old man told a judge that he shot and killed a man inside a South Carolina Walmart store because a third individual wronged him. The admission was made during a July 6 bond hearing when the victim's father asked the man why he had killed his son. The man was denied bond and is being detained at the Greenville County Detention Center.
According to media reports, Greenville County Sheriff's Office deputies were dispatched to the Walmart store located on White Horse Road in Berea at approximately 1:30 p.m. on July 5. When they arrived at the scene, deputies say that they discovered a man near the store's entrance who had been shot multiple times in the head and torso. Bystanders are said to have told deputies that two men who appeared to know one another were involved in a dispute before the shooting started.
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William G. Yarborough Attorney at Law
308 W. Stone Avenue
Greenville,
SC
29609
Toll Free:
800-469-3658
Phone:
864-326-3026
Fax:
864-370-0022
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