Jury duty, just sitting around

So I got called for jury duty again. This time it was magistrate's court.
When I got there, I was just one of eight jurors. There was a Highway Patrolman, and the magistrate arrived a little bit later. No lawyer or defendant.
I thought that was interesting. The judge said that they would try the accused in absentia, but he showed up, by himself, a few minutes after the judge started court.
No lawyer, I thought. No family, I thought. This is going to be interesting.
The judge had spent a lot of time explaining the process, but I was a bit bored, having covered it for years and being a confirmed know-it-all. But when the guy showed up late and alone, I knew it was going to be interesting.
A lawyer who represents himself, the saying goes, has a fool for a client. The average Joe who decides to represent himself has an absolute freaking moron for a client.
It took a while for it to become clear what the charge was. Had to be vehicular, because it was a Highway Patrol case. Wasn't even going to be a first offense DUI, because the judge mentioned there was no alcohol involved.
When we got right down to it, the guy was charged with ... (drum roll please) failure to have his trailer chained to his vehicle.
The trooper, a nice corporal, testified. Played a tape of the "incident."
I wasn't on the jury, but I stayed anyway. Didn't have a note pad, so I'm getting details from memory. But in December, he was driving on Cherry Road, turned onto Celanese and pulled in to or near the Home Depot. The trooper had stopped the guy for failure to wear a seat belt, but the guy had said he had a note to excuse him from wearing the seat belt. The trooper said he accepted that, and did not charge the man for that crime, but noticed walking up to the vehicle that there was no chains. So he gave him a ticket for that.
You couldn't hear the man clearly on the tape, but you could tell he was mouthing off, from the get-go.
When he came in, he didn't really apologize for being late, and when the judge asked him if he "had anything before we proceed," a standard thing judges ask, he did not respond.
The man had been given a January appearance date on the ticket, and in January had requested a jury trial, which was set for Feb. 26.
According to this guy, who was popping off more than a few times during the brief trial, when he met with the judge, the judge told him he WAS going to throw him in jail for 30 days, so he requested the trial at that time.
"That's why we're here," he said.
The judge said when they met, he asked the man if he had, since he had gotten the ticket, gone ahead and gotten chains for his trailer. The judge said the man asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Sounds like the guy thought the judge was trying to trip him up into admitting something.
The judge said he was wanting to work with the guy. The trooper was willing to work with the guy. If he had gotten chains for the trailer, they would have dismissed the case. But he refused to answer the question and the judge told him the potential sentences.
Magistrate's court can be a bit more informal than "big" court. In all the big courts I have been to, the charge is clearly stated, and almost always, the potential sentences are laid out as well. They weren't at this trial, so when the jury went in to deliberate, the trooper, being kind to what he thought was the average citizen with better things to do, told me I was free to go.
But I am curious by nature and was free to stay, and asked him some questions.
The potential sentences are a $115 fine (which gets about doubled with court costs) or up to 30 days in jail.
Before I talked to the judge after the case, I was thinking this guy could have paid $115 and put this behind him. Yet he requested a jury trial.
He didn't really defend himself, but he doesn't have to. When he was "questioning" the trooper, he made some statements, which the judge said was testimony. But he flatly called the trooper a liar, twice. He said the trooper testified that he had a tan, four-door Jeep.
Which were TWO big lies, to this guy. I couldn't make out the color of the vehicle on the tape. Might have been white, might have been tan. But the trooper might have said four-door but meant four-wheel drive. I don't really recall what he said there.
A lawyer, had the man hired one, would have honed in on such a "discrepancy" and quizzed the trooper extensively about the difference in what he testified from memory and what was on the tape. He would have shown the jury there was a discrepancy, if there was one, and planted the idea in the jury's mind that there was a lie or two being told But calling a career highway patrolman who had served on the governor's protection detail a liar just didn't work.
He just came across as surly.
The trooper spoke in a calm voice through his testimony, but had a bit more emotion in his voice in summing up. He saw what he saw. He's been doing this a long time, he said. The patrol works to save lives.
In summation, the accused called the trooper a liar again, said the jurors didn't want their daughters getting stopped by a cop like him.
"He's one of the bad ones," he said.
It was absolutely over the top.
Over a violation that could have been dismissed without even a fine, had he bought chains for his trailer. Over a violation he might have paid a $230 fine and court costs penalty.
The jury spent more time going to the bathroom before deliberating than it did deliberating. It wasn't 10 minutes.
While the jury was out, the man started asking what the judge would do about sentencing him. He seemed like he had chosen that time to try to be reasonable. He wanted 30 days to get his affairs in order. I wasn't sure the guy would necessarily get prison time. So it struck me as both defeatist, after having requested the trial to begin with, to start asking about an accommodation in sentencing.
Sentencing in big court is a bit more formal than this was handled Wednesday.
But at a certain point, after the jury had left and some paper work had been filled out, they slapped the cuffs on him.
So began another back and forth about how he viewed he had been bullied by the cop and the judge.
But what was also hysterical was the guy working security for the judge, while they were waiting, goes up to the now-guilty fellow, and says, "We went to high school together, didn't we?"
It took a second for the guy to recognize the constable, but they had. So they spent a few minutes visiting while awaiting the sentence.
I have always wanted to serve on a jury and I have never had the chance to be one of the 12 Angry Men (and women). Not in the box. The closest I came, dear old Walter Bedingfield, a late, great defense attorney in Barnwell County who was so good because he knew all the cops when they were in high school and he had their high school hijinks in his back pocket for leverage, struck me because I worked at the paper.
I got called in York County, but after the first day, zip. No juries needed.
I love the criminal justice system and I think it is morbidly slow, but generally it works.
But this experience in the end just struck me as a colossal waste of time. I blame only the guilty dude for it. He had a chip on his shoulder, instead of a seat belt. He never elaborated and no one asked what medical issue he has that gets him an excuse to not wear it. I myself wonder if the excuse is signed, "Epstein's mother." (Dated reference, I know.)
But what was patently obvious to a first-time observer like me was confirmed by the constable.
"He was just like that in high school," he said. "Always had problems with authority figures."
Mostly, that is police. He gets pulled over a lot — he says it's because of the seat belt issue. But he has always paid those tickets.
The constable said the guy was a decent wrestler in high school, but had trouble with the coaches.
"Authority figures."
I talked to the judge afterward, actually getting a couple of interesting tidbits of information that might make some decent stories. He was interested in me and my job as well. And he has a keen interest in demographics, with some population figures and changes over the past decade on tap in his mind. Seemed like a smart guy.
His time was wasted. The trooper said he and all his fellow troopers have about 10 percent of their job time allocated for court time.
But he spent the morning, from about 9 to 10 a.m., handling 100 to 150 tickets in that same courtroom.
He then spent about an hour at a trial that was totally unnecessary.
The trooper tried to say it wasn't. But it was a waste of his time.
They say a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. This case proved it. This was a waste of the guilty guy's time, too. His little knowledge of his "rights," had it been balanced with just a little knowledge of his responsibilities, might have spared him 30 days.
Summary courts, as municipal and magistrates courts are known in South Carolina, rarely end up with someone going to jail, the judge said. Not on a traffic case that doesn't involve alcohol, for sure.
Maybe he'll learn something in there. I doubt it
The only person's time that wasn't wasted was mine, I think. The jurors who served got the hell out of there as soon as they could. But I stuck around.
It was great entertainment. A laugh riot. Like watching "Cops," but in the courtroom.

Edenmoor records batted back and forth between Spratt, Mulvaney | Fort Mill Times - Fort Mill, SC

State Sen. Mick Mulvaney, R-Indian Land, a candidate for the Fifth Congressional District seat in South Carolina.

Edenmoor records batted back and forth between Spratt, Mulvaney | Fort Mill Times - Fort Mill, SC

LANCASTER -- The Edenmoor debacle has come back up and again been laid at the feet of Indian Land developer Mick Mulvaney because U.S. Rep. John Spratt can't talk about his record, Mulvaney said last week.
Mulvaney, a first-term Republican state senator, is challenging the 14-term incumbent congressman in the November general election. Spratt mentioned Edenmoor at a debate in Lake Wylie last month and last week began airing an ad, also available online, called "Flipped," based on the development and its woes.

The failed development is coming up again because Spratt has "nothing else to go on," Mulvaney said at a press conference he called last Thursday in downtown Lancaster.
Most Democratic incumbents facing stiff challenges from conservatives are using defense of Social Security as a big part of their playbook, Mulvaney said, adding that Spratt can't use that tactic because he has told some newspapers over the years he favors privatization of some kind.
Mulvaney said he also believes the ad is a sign that Spratt is no longer running his campaign. Some reports say this is the first time he has gone negative in his 28-year career as a politician.
Nu Wexler, a South Carolina native and Democratic operative who now lives in Washington, D.C., has returned to the Palmetto State to assist Spratt's campaign. He scoffed at Mulvaney's claim, saying last week’s press conference is a sign the Lancaster County senator is worried.
Democratic Party operatives who attended the press conference say Mulvaney did not tell the whole truth in his press conference.
York County Democratic Party Chairman Richards McCrae actually said after the press conference that Lancaster County Council Chairman Rudy Carter was "lying out of his [butt]" in defending Mulvaney.
Democratic officials are confident of their facts. One provided the Fort Mill Times with a compact disc containing a timeline, longer than a similar timeline Mulvaney prepared, an audio recording of Mulvaney speaking to Lancaster County Council, and about 34 different records related to the property in Edenmoor.
The records prepared by the Spratt campaign are lengthy.
Mulvaney also released a stack of records that he said detail his purchase of the property and the sale of it, a planned development agreement sold by his successors in the project, and records of permits issued by DHEC to those successors for initial work.
Mulvaney is still relatively unknown and has not really been vetted by voters across the 14 counties that comprise the Fifth Congressional District, Wexler said.
Wexler was upset that he and other campaign staffers were not allowed to enter the press conference, but Rainey and the other Democrats were allowed inside. The officials who went in and Wexler said Mulvaney is refusing to accept any responsibility for what happened to Edenmoor.
While Wexler took being barred from the room as a slight, Mulvaney addressed the Democrats who did get inside with cordiality at times, calling them "my Democratic friends." One Democratic aide from the state party in Columbia brought a video camera and recorded the entire press conference. That video has apparently been posted on YouTube.
A freelance writer working for the Fort Mill Times also videotaped the press conference and the entire video is available on YouTube.
Mulvaney said he hoped to put the issue behind him and move on "to the things people want to talk about, the things we need to talk about."
When asked if it indicated Spratt is having trouble this campaign season because this kind of ad was coming out so close to the election season, the Democrats at the event said it is a difficult campaign season for incumbents and Democrats.
"They could run a stray dog against Spratt and do as well as they are doing," this campaign season, McCrae said.
But as it stood, Mulvaney said that 35 days before the election, District 5 was getting half-truths and innuendo.
"This is what people hate about American politics," he said.

No way to know profit, but records show mlllions involved

State Sen. Mick Mulvaney, R-Indian Land, a candidate for the Fifth Congressional District seat in South Carolina, at a press conference he called last week.

Republican Congressional candidate Mick Mulvaney on Thursday, Oct. 7, provided copies of land transaction records detailing the time his company assembled the project for a development he called St. Katherine's, a development at the heart of an attack ad from his Democratic opponent John Spratt, a 14-term incumbent.
The development has failed and there is runoff from cleared land running off into a nearby creek. It was supposed to have thousands of dwellings, but has about 50. Bonds were used to build athletics fields, a cabana and an EMS station are in default.
Spratt's ad blames Mulvaney and said he walked away from the project after selling the land for a $7 million profit.
The first transaction was the purchase of 179.44 acres on Sept. 10, 1999. The land was bought for $713,715.60, or $3,977.46 an acre.
Two purchases on Jan. 5, 2005 for $39,583.33 of 36.8 acres completed the work Mulvaney did assembling St. Katherine's.
The development totaled 834.37 acres, bought for $4,928,077.56, or an average of $5,906.35 an acre.
Mulvaney also provided three records that detail the sale of the land from his to Lawson's Bend LLC, a partnership between GS Carolina and Sandler LLC Those sales were in May 5, 2005.
The records show three land sales:
• $659,277 if 36 acres;
• $10,689,260 for 179.4 acres; and
• $3,030,950 for an unspecified acreage.
That's a total of $10,689,260, according to a spreadsheet of the numbers.
The Spratt ad said Mulvaney made $7 million when he sold the property.
In his press conference, Mulvaney said subtracting the cost of his purchases from the price for which it was sold would provide a "gross" figure, but not a profit. It doesn't include the costs spent assembling the parcels, legal fees etc.
The difference between the cost to assemble the parcels and the cost to sell them is actually more than $9 million, according to the records Mulvaney provided.
Mulvaney said he would not say how much profit he made on the project, but showed select reporters income tax records from 2005 and 2006 that show a total annual income from one of his businesses substantially lower than the amount Spratt's ad claims he made.
However, Mulvaney has assembled the land for the development using several different companies.
The records Mulvaney's provided show 12 transactions, with parcels being bought by:
• K&J Partners of N.C.;
• Wedgewood Properties LLC;
• St. Catherine Properties LLC;
• Mulvaney Properties/Lancaster LLC; and
• Mulvaney Properties/South Carolina. LLC.
Those are different pieces of the Mulvaney family development business.
The records Mulvaney provided show he transferred all the land to Lawson's Bend from just two arms, K&J and St. Catherine Properties.
Spratt campaign workers provided a compact disc containing similar records. The records obtained by the Spratt campaign show slightly different prices for land transfers and acreage.
The Spratt record search apparently missed one parcel Mulvaney listed as being in St. Katherine. But Spratt's record show three sales to Lawson's Bend totaling the same amount as in Mulvaney's records.
Both indicate Mulvaney and family sold the land for about $9 million more than they bought it. Mulvaney said he owned just a 3.33 percent interest in the entity that sold the property to Lawson's Bend.
The Spratt disc also contains a number of other documents related in some way to Edenmoor.

Here are the figures from records released by Mulvaney.
Purchases

Date		Parcel size	Price
9/10/99		179.44	$713,715.60
5/1/01		294.7	$1,600,000.00
9/6/01		51	$100,050.00
9/6/01		(Same)	$259,920.00
6/24/02		13.89	$95,000.00
6/27/02		6.1	$24,757.20
7/29/02		23	$90,798.08
8/28/02		59.3	$435,000.00
8/28/02		138.24	$750,000.00
1/6/03		31.9	$188,836.68
1/5/05		12.8	$320,000.00
1/5/05		24	$350,000.00
Total		834.37	$4,928,077.56
Sale
Date		Parcel Size	Price
5/5/05		36	$659,277.00
5/5/05		630.93	$3,030,950.00
5/5/05		179.4	$10,689,260.00
Total sale			$14,379,487.00
Difference			9,451,409.44

Mulvaney holds press conference to dispute allegations in Spratt ad

State Sen. Mick Mulvaney, R-Indian Land, and his campaign staff walk across Main Street in Lancaster before a press conference.

Republican Congressional candidate Mick Mulvaney denied allegations made in a campaign advertisement by incumbent U.S. Rep. John Spratt, the 14-term Democrat he is seeking to unseat in November.

The ad, called "Flipped," makes numerous implications without giving him much to categorically deny, says Mulvaney. However, he says it is harmful not only to his reputation but to others as well.

"This is getting a little out of control, by the way," he said Thursday, Oct. 7.

"This is the type of thing that has to stop in this race," said Mulvaney, a state senator from Indian Land whose district includes parts of both Lancaster and York counties.

"It's one half-truth and innuendo after another," Mulvaney said of the ad and an old letter to the editor of a Lancaster County paper that attacked him.

Mulvaney said he doesn't like the attacks but expects them. But he said it is out of hand because others are now also being attacked.

Mulvaney said a Spratt volunteer said at a recent event "they know" Mulvaney bought off Lancaster County Councilman Rudy Carter, who has in the past defended Mulvaney's involvement in the deal.

Carter, a Democrat, also attended Mulvaney's press conference and said his father told a man's good name was his best attribute.

"Mick's been a friend of mine for a long time. John's been a friend of mine for a long time. I think the world of both of them," he said. "But if John Spratt knows some of his campaign people made comments like that, than John and I have a problem."

Mulvaney said it is going too far.

"This is my life, this is my family, this is how I provide for my wife and family, and I am being accused of some of the most heinous thing you can do in business, which is to be unethical," he said.

A reporter with the Associated Press and some Spratt campaign staffers arrived late and were not allowed into the crowded but not packed room at a Lancaster law firm where Mulvaney held his meeting. While the Spratt staffers were barred, a couple of representatives of the York and Lancaster county Democratic parties, as well as a Democratic campaign staffer from Columbia armed with a digital camera to record the proceedings, arrived on time and were allowed in.

The Lancaster County land deal had been in the works since 1999, which Mulvaney said was the major evidence that the property had not been "flipped," as the name of the ad says.

Flipping in real estate happens over a short period of time, sometimes with property being sold twice the same day.

Spratt's ad says Mulvaney made a $7 million profit selling the failed 500-acre development near Indian Land.

Mulvaney said he sold the land in 2005 and showed select reporters two tax forms from 2005 and 2006. The total annual income listed on the records for those years was millions less than what Spratt alleges in his ad. Mulvaney did not allow reporters to copy the forms and requested they not write down the specific figures.

Mulvaney said the forms were the S-Corporation filings for one of his LLCs.

Spratt's ad says Mulvaney secured $30 million in bonds to develop the land. Mulvaney did get permission from Lancaster County to issue bonds in that amount, but those bonds were never sold. When he sold the land to later developers, they scuttled much of the plans, including the zoning he had done for it, and revamped the overall plan.  Lawson's Bend LLC got its own bonds, and those bonds are in default.

So Spratt's ad, which says the project failed despite the bonds Mulvaney got, is not factual in that regard.

Mulvaney's development would have had apartments, more homes so a higher density. The homes would have been cheaper homes. The new developers wanted to sell fewer but higher-end homes.

The land development never materialized as either Mulvaney or the second team envisioned, he said. He blames it entirely on the collapse of the housing market.

The ad also says Mulvaney vouched for the new development team and made a promise to stay involved. The ad says Mulvaney's "partners" had defaulted on a land deal in North Carolina to the tune of $72 million right before Mulvaney vouched for them to Lancaster County Council. Mulvaney said he didn't know about that failure of one of two partners, but it is easily understood and explained.

He said IBM pulled out of a research park in the N.C. Research Triangle and it ruined the park, but the company was a sound one business with ties to Sara Lee and PYI/Monarch Foods. Parts of the land company are still in business, he said.

Mulvaney said he dealt primarily with the other partner, GS Carolina, which he said is a strong business still in the area. It has another development of the size and scale of Edenmoor that is still under active development north of Charlotte.

Mulvaney said he wanted to "bid" to remain the manager of the development process, but "that never happened." He said he hasn't talked to the company official he most dealt with for at least two years.

Mulvaney denied making $7 million selling the land, but refused to answer direct questions about how much he spent to assemble the land, first for his own development company, nor how much he made when he sold it in 2005.

"Our business is private," he said. "We don't disclose our profits. I own 3.33 percent of the entity that owned this land."

He assumes that critics of his involvement have taken deed stamps for the 12 purchases he made to assemble the property and subtracted those totals from the totals on the deed stamps from the three sales he made to Lawson's Bend.

That would be a gross number, however.

"That would be like looking at the raw materials on a car and saying that was the cost of the car," he said.

He would not detail how much he spent assembling the land. In addition to the purchase prices, he would have had to pay legal fees on the purchases, pay filing fees for zoning issues, and pay for staff time.

He admitted releasing the exact figures might demonstrate what actually happened, and said he would speak to reporters off the record. During that conversation, he showed the two tax forms, but they did not have a gross total for his purchases or for his sale to Lawson Bend.

He had earlier said that kind of information is never released in his business.

"It just isn't done," he said.

The ad, by innuendo, blames Mulvaney for all that has happened to the development since. But he said his company never turned over any dirt on the project or did any land preparation.

Any of the work done in the development was done by his successors on the project. About 50 homes, soccer fields and an EMS station have been built.  The bond obtained by the second developers paid for the fields and the EMS station.

But sidewalks are in need of repair, as is the EMS station. There is runoff from cleared tracts of land going into a nearby creek.

Mulvaney said Lancaster County taxpayers are not on the hook, neither for his $30 million bond, because it was never issued or sold, nor the later bond Lawson's Bend obtained. The bonds are not general obligation bonds, Mulvaney said. The residents in Edenmoor pay a "special assessment" on their property tax bill, above and beyond their regular county property taxes.

Had the development succeeded, thousands of households would be paying the "assessment," but instead, about 50 or so families now in the development are on the hook.

Mulvaney said the development should have been foreclosed on. He said that is how such failed developments normally proceed. But the banks holding the liens on the property are refusing to foreclose because of the collapse of the housing market and the freeze on credit and financing the country has been experiencing.

It's a case of regulatory gridlock, he said.

Mulvaney's campaign released copies of deeds for the purchases and the sale, along with a timeline of the transactions. See related post.

The Spratt campaign released a compact disc with records it says establishes that the ad is true.

The general election is "35 days away," Mulvaney said at the time of the Thursday press conference.



Mulvaney has created a website to respond to the Edenmoor ad.

Here's raw footage of the press conference, in three pieces.

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3

Fort Mill Times: Hwy. 160 not yet Cherry Road, but residents wary | Fort Mill Times - Fort Mill, SC

Hwy. 160 not yet Cherry Road, but residents wary | Fort Mill Times - Fort Mill, SC

VIDEO, Story: Severe weather lab passes its first test | The Herald - Rock Hill, SC

Severe weather lab passes its first test | The Herald - Rock Hill, SC

YouTube - IBHS2.mov