♪ opening music ♪ ♪ Gavin>> Welcome to This Week in South Carolina .

I'm Gavin Jackson.

After several tragic mass shootings this week across South Carolina, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott joins us to discuss what can be done to better protect the citizens of the state.

And the Associated Press' Meg Kinnard gives an update on the death penalty and two potential executions.

But first more from this week.

In the Statehouse this week, both chambers were back in action as the final day of session is now three weeks away, and controversial bills dealing with critical race theory, a transgender student athlete ban, medical marijuana and a popular early voting bill, as well as the budget are competing for action and attention by May 12th.

On Wednesday evening, the Senate passed an early voting bill that also strengthens elections, but not before senators amended the bill to get themselves more oversight over the state election commission, something House Republicans, Democrats and the governor oppose.

>> There's no oversight at all.

What we're asking for ...is nothing new.

It's not abnormal.

This is not usurping power from the governor.

Look, y'all know me, those of you who have been here for a while.

You've heard me argue about different things.

I'm not going to assert power from the governor.

I'm usually the one who's wanting to give more power to the governor, but I do think that a check and balance is important.

Right now, there is no check, Gavin>> Senators say they've been bullied into having to approve the house's version of the bill.

With temperatures heated over this broadly supported bill.

It's a wonder what else could be impacted in the final legislative days, like the Senate approved medical marijuana bill?

Sen. Davis>>...did you know that I'm going through that right now, with S-150, the medical marijuana bill, where a majority of the members you know are looking to leadership and leadership I've observed firsthand has tremendous sway over what the members do.

Were you aware of that?

Gavin>> That conservative bill would allow those with certain medical conditions the ability to use marijuana oils, salves, patches and vaporizers while burning leaf would still remain illegal.

This week, House members debated a bill that prevents teachers from teaching that one race, sex, ethnicity, religion, color or national origin is inherently superior to another is inherently privileged or oppressive, that an individual should be discriminated against because of those immutable characteristics, or that they bear responsibility for past actions.

House Democrats filed hundreds of amendments to the bill that they say will curtail the teaching of African American History.

>> So, we're trying to give these individuals no pathways to success by removing some of their history.

Y'all should be ashamed of yourself trying to put this on our young people.

You should absolutely be ashamed of yourself, and I'm hurting right now because we just lost three young people.

Every day, I'm dealing with young people who are dying because they don't know who they are.

They don't know where they come from.

I had to look mine up on 23.com, 23 and Me.

I had to look mine up to figure out that I was 44% Nigerian.

I bet some of y'all know exactly where you came from: Ireland or England, Europe.

I have no idea where I come from.

We should be ashamed of ourselves, trying to limit the access to education for our young people.

Absolutely ashamed.

Gavin>> The bill will still need to go through the Senate, which hasn't taken up any such legislation this year.

It will be in the budget next week.

Joining me now to discuss the recent mass shooting in Columbia is Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott.

Sheriff Lott, thanks for joining us.

>> Thank you for having me.

Gavin>> So, Sheriff, let's just start first off with the latest information about that shooting at Columbiana.

Mall on April 16.

Can you tell us what happened there and the latest information you have?

>> Well, the third arrest was made so, I think we've got all three people arrested that was involved and this goes back to 2018 murder that we had and the level of Richland area and people involved they've still been at each other and unfortunately, they ran into each other at the mall this past weekend and decided they'd continue the feud that they had from 2018 and engage in a shootout and got a lot of innocent people hurt at Columbiana Mall.

>> Yeah, nine people struck by gunfire, six injured in the panic.

What were your initial thoughts when you heard that call come in?

What did you think could possibly have been going on at that moment?

>>Well, if it's an active shooter you're just scared to death to get someone that's in there doing a mass shooting.

It turned out that was not the case.

It wasn't just a person in those shooting unknown persons.

It was somebody in there that knew each other but instead of shooting each other down, we ended up getting an innocent people shot and that's what we tend to see sometimes when people like this engage in gunfire in a gun fight in a crowded area.

Gavin>> ...how often are we seeing these mass shooting events?

I know you've been on the force for decades and you've been around the state, of course.

What's your perception on how these mass shootings are occurring?

or the state the prevalency of them?

Sheriff Lott>> Well, we're seeing more and more across the United States.

So, this was the first one that we've had like this in Richland County in the Midlands of Columbia, but across the United States, we're almost hearing about them weekly, where there's a mass shooting.

Sometimes it's a gunman just goes in and shoots people they don't know.

Sometimes it's someone that goes in and has a target, but ends up shooting other people besides the target, or actually after.

Gavin>> And what are you guys doing, your force right now doing to really kind of prepare for these moments?

I know you work really hand in hand with the Columbia police department and other agencies.

How do you train for this?

How do you prepare for these moments?

Sheriff Lott>> We'll have visibility.

We encourage anywhere where there's a lot of people going to be if it's a festival or something outside, or even the mall, have high visibility of uniformed police officers there.

That's one of the greatest deterrence is having a uniform officer present, and having a lot of them.

And so, when the bad guys see that, then they say they're not going to do it in front of a cop.

And so that high visibility is one of the things that we try to work on as much as we can with different organizations.

Gavin>> And sir, going back to this shooting, like you said, two individuals were arrested and a third just turned themselves in this morning.

It's Thursday morning, we're taping this.

They've been charged with attempted murder and felony assault.

Do you feel that these charges are sufficient?

They're also not being granted bond at this time?

How do you feel that things are shaping up right now in this process?

Sheriff Lott>> I think the criminal justice system is working.

They're being charged appropriately.

I hope it's only attempted murder.

I hope we don't have anyone die from the injuries that they had from last weekend.

So, I think that they're very serious charges, and I think our system, our criminal justice system now is going to take this very seriously.

and hopefully send a message to people that this is not going to be tolerated.

Gavin>> What about some criticism, you hear from maybe some on the right who complain about seeing democratic led cities or counties or police departments or sheriff's departments, saying that they're weak on law, that they're not strong and law and order issues?

How do you respond to that?

Have you heard any of that criticism in the past?

and how do you how do you handle that?

Sheriff Lott>> No, I haven't heard any criticism directed at Richland, County Sheriff's Department, or any of our agencies here in the Midlands of Columbia.

They know that we take a tough stance on crime, and this is not a Democrat issue, not a Republican issue.

This is a community issue.

We need to put politics aside and just do the right thing and protect our people.

Gavin>>...Sheriff Lott, talk to me about what needs to be done here, because even this week after this mass shooting.

You know, we saw a separate mass shooting on Easter Sunday, early in the morning and Sunday down in Hampton County, obviously not your jurisdiction, but we saw another shooting on Wednesday here with three teenagers one of them died, two in serious condition.

How do we address this?

What needs to be done at the community level?

Maybe at the police department level?

What do you see needs to be done?

>> Well, first thing to realize, it's not a law enforcement problem.

This is a community problem.

Until we address it as a community, we're going to continue to have this.

We just got young people who think a gun is the answer they need to everything they have, any problem they have any disrespect they get.

Conflict resolution doesn't exist for them except with a gun, and so, we got to change the minds and hearts of our young people.

Let them know guns, are getting them one or two places: cemetery are in prison.

They're bombarded by media and music and their heroes all glorify violence.

Look at the games they play, either blowing something up or shooting something.

So from an early age, our young people are just completely - operated that you know, a gun or weapon is how you solve any problem they have.

And we need to teach them that that's not right.

We need to teach them what the real world is about, that when you shoot someone you don't push a button and they get up and start over again.

We got to start at home, but then, if they don't get it at home, and we've always heard it takes a village to raise a child.

I think our village is our community and we need to step up now and work together more than we ever have.

Gavin>> ...when we see these shootings sheriff, where are these guns coming from?

Are they legally obtained?

Are they illegally obtained?

How do you - what's the breakdown like when you see these crimes?

>> Most of these guns are coming from gun owners who leave their guns in their vehicles and leave their vehicles unlocked.

Young people go through neighborhoods at night and just open car doors or truck doors and go in and search and people leave their weapons there, and a majority of guns that we see used in these crimes are just gun owners who are not responsible gun owners and leave them in their car and our teenagers get their hands on them and then they use them to shoot people and then they trade the gun off and they're used in another shooting.

So, we can stop that as a community, just we got to be careful where we have our guns.

Make sure we're responsible gun owners.

Leave our vehicles locked all the time.

Do not ever leave them unlocked.

We just got to protect our weapons and that'll keep them from getting in the hands of these teenagers.

Gavin>> ...this week, Columbia Senator Dick Harpootlian said on the Senate floor that he wanted to see tougher gun laws take place in the state increase our, what's going on with the laws on the books already, including making unlawful carrying a felony with mandatory prison time.

Do you think that that's necessary?

Do you see any legislative remedy for this situation right now?

Sheriff Lott>> Yeah, I do think it's necessary Senator Harpootlian called me before he went on the Senate floor that day, and we discussed it.

So yeah, we need to put some teeth in our laws.

Right now, you can get caught unlawfully carrying a gun 10 times and it's all first offense.

So, we have to hold people accountable more than what our laws have now.

So, I think changes our laws very necessary because we have a crisis right now.

We're losing too many young people.

That 14 to 28 age group is our target group that we're having so many problems with.

>> And that's something that, again, is something that you say the community needs to be a part of.

Is there any active programming going on with the sheriff's department and community organizations.

Or, what do you see?

How does that kind of mesh together?

What role does the sheriff's department play?

Sheriff Lott>> Well, we help facilitate some of this stuff.

Unfortunately, we got too many groups that are in it for their own motivation and not for our saving our kids.

So we need to pull people together that really want to work and save our kids.

So, we're helping do that.

There are some organizations that we're working with.

We're trying to get everybody on the same page.

Nobody has the answer.

No one program's the answer, but when we put all these heads together and come up with a good program, then we'll be very successful with it.

Gavin>>...sheriff with about three minutes left.

I want to ask you about crime rates in general in the state SLED produced a report last year for 2020, the most recent data available, showing that you know, we've been seeing aggravated crimes jumping.

We saw murders jumped to 552 in 2020, 2019, I believe.

and also just you know, a wide variety of crimes jumping up.

What do you see fueling this?

How do you address this and what's it like here in Richland County?

Sheriff Lott>> Well, our property crimes have been reduced, where we saw a drastic increases in violence.

And again, that's young people with guns are shootings, are fatal shootings, and are non-fatal shootings.

We've had well over 150 people shot in the Midlands of Columbia, who didn't die.

If we didn't have great medical service, we'd lost more people.

We had 32 murders in Richland County alone last year, and that's a bigger increase than we've had before.

So, our increasing our focus has got to be on violent crime and that's people with guns.

All the other crimes have been reduced.

People breaking into houses, breaking into businesses, stealing, except for stealing guns out of cars.

Everything else has been reduced.

It's the violent crimes that is driving our problems that we've got right now.

Gavin>>...Sheriff, what about the state of policing in Richland County right now, you know, we've seen you know, there's been a lot of discussions over the years about tactics, funding in some places.

There have been some fraught community relations.

What is the Richland County Sheriff's Office experiencing right now when it comes to dealing with these issues, the community level and also maybe recruiting and what it's like to be a police officer in 2022.

Sheriff Lott>> We're having no problems.

We're getting lots of young people who want to be in this job.

And our relationships with the community have been great, because we've been building that foundation for years and years.

You don't build a relationship during a crisis.

So, we reach out of all of our communities.

Richland County is very diverse, and it's up to us together these different communities and build that relationship, build that bridge with them, and one of the first things you have to do is your agency has to reflect the community we serve, and so, we do that.

We reflect that diversity in Richland County.

So, we have great support from our community.

They worked hand in hand with us.

It doesn't happen overnight, and we've been building that for a long time.

So that's not an issue.

The issue we've got is getting the minds and hearts of the young people now who believe that violence is the answer to everything.

Gavin>> And just the last question, sir, what can folks out there do?

What advice do you have for people to stay safe out there right now?

Sheriff Lott>> Get involved, get involved in a crime watch group in your neighborhood.

Care about young people.

If you see a young person that you can mentor, a young person you can talk to, talk to them.

Take the opportunity to talk to them about violence and making good decisions.

You may be able to save someone's life by just talking with them.

Gavin>> Important words, right there.

Thank you very much to Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott.

Thank you, sir.

>> Thank you.

>> Joining me now to discuss the death penalty in South Carolina is Associated Press reporter Meg Kinnard, Meg, welcome back.

Meg Kinnard>> Good to be with you.

Gavin>> Now, Meg, you've been covering the latest on what's going on the death penalty in South Carolina, including how next Friday the state was set to hold its first execution in more than a decade.

That execution was just temporarily put on hold, which we'll get to but take us through how we got to this point right now where the state is back on track to hold executions again.

>> As you noted, it has been more than a decade since South Carolina utilized its death penalty.

That's an involuntary pause that was pretty much due to the state being able to - unable to procure lethal injection drugs, the trifecta that is used to put inmates to death by lethal injection.

In South Carolina, there had been the choice between electrocution or lethal injection.

If inmates picked lethal injection and there weren't any drugs, that pretty much meant that they couldn't be executed.

That made for the revival of a debate of adding a method to the South Carolina protocols for execution, and last year, it was debated that be the firing squad option that caused a lot of kerfuffle in the legislature and across the state, but that was approved by the legislature last year and signed into law by Governor Henry McMaster.

The proposal was put forward by two former prosecutors who are legislators one Republican Greg Hembree, and one Democrat, Dick Harpootlian, who said that if we're going to have the death penalty in South Carolina, perhaps it should be through a more humane option, and to him, he said that, that could be the firing squad.

There were two inmates last summer who were set to be executed, but courts put their put a stay in place on both of their executions, because there wasn't yet a firing squad actually set up in the state, and so fast forward to this year where the State Department of Corrections has instituted its firing squad.

They put out protocols and memos about how they intend to carry out executions by firing squad, and most recently, we have had several inmates come up through the end of their appeals, and one of them Richard Moore did choose firing squad as his option of execution.

As you know, that is on a stay, right now, while he pursues legal challenges, but here again, in South Carolina, this is the current moment for the death penalty.

Gavin>> Yeah, they have that option between electrocution and the firing squad at this point, a lot of them opting for the firing squad, of course, like you said, and that's newly added, like you said, as well.

Where do we rank in states, that still have the death penalty on the books, when it comes to firing squad?

You don't really hear about that method being used very often.

Meg>> There are two dozen states across the country that currently have the death penalty in use.

South Carolina now is one of only four with a firing squad option.

There are about eight that have electrocution, then the rest of the states have lethal injection as their primary method.

But in, you know, in the modern era, as we call it of the death penalty since 1976, there have been more than 1500 executions by various methods across the state.

It's been in decline, though in recent decades.

Last year, across the country, there were only 11 executions total, none of which in South Carolina and three of those were at the federal level, but if you go back a decade before that, in 2011, there were 43 executions across the country, one of those here in South Carolina.

So, there's a lot of debate occurring about whether these methods should be used at all, but certainly the practice has been going down in recent decades.

Gavin>>...a lot of that fueled by the inability to get those drugs, like you said, that cocktail of drugs for lethal injection, executions.

Meg>> There's been a lot of trouble for states trying to procure all of these different drugs with drug companies saying we know why you want them, and that's why we won't sell them to you.

There are various debates about whether you should have a law in place to shield the names of the companies providing these drugs.

That's been debated here in South Carolina, as well.

But regardless of what measures are put in place, we'd still here in South Carolina have not been able to get them, and so that prompted therefore, the debate on adding different methods to the execution protocols.

Gavin>> Meg, you just talked about Richard Bernard Moore, who is set to be, who was set to be executed on April 29.

That's been granted a stay by the state Supreme Court.

Tell us this process right now, where these appeals are.

What the other avenues are for his appeal in this ongoing process.

Meg>> Richard Moore has exhausted his habeas.

So that means the regular type of appeals that you see when an inmate is condemned to death.

They can put forth several different legal challenges just based on their execution and their conviction and their sentence rather, but for Richard Moore, his lawyers are also pursuing challenges to the execution methods here in South Carolina, their constitutionality, as well as a potential petition for him before the US Supreme Court.

These are things that we anticipate seeing, particularly when there's a new protocol, like firing squad added to a state's methods of execution.

Those are all still pending, and so, we await those decisions.

Gavin>> So next steps, we're just really waiting for these courts to decide, do we have any idea what that timeline might look like?

Anything, we can look back to the past and say, two weeks, a month or several months from now.

Meg>> It could be any of those all of the above.

The state supreme court when they issued the stay of execution for Richard Moore said that they would provide more details later as to their reasoning, and so it's whatever's in those details.

His attorneys will be coming through them and then perhaps transforming those into part of his ongoing legal challenges.

Gavin>>...it's not just Richard Moore, who was set to be executed in this state.

We just saw on the same day that stay was ordered, the South Carolina Department of Corrections.

announced that they've given notice to death row inmate Brad Keith Sigmon, that his execution date is May 13th.

So, I'm assuming we're going to expect the same situation that we're seeing with Richard Moore as well, happen with Keith Sigmon with Brad Sigmon, I'm sorry.

Meg>> Certainly, and Brad Sigmon was one of those two inmates last summer whose executions were set and then put off while the firing squad was still being put together.

There are 35 inmates, all men currently on South Carolina's death row at various stages of exhausting their appeals.

So again, when those appeals run out, that's when we see the state Supreme Court Act and issue orders of execution.

Depending on where the other inmates are at the stages in the process of their own appeals.

We could see more orders coming.

I will note that it is not unusual to see these appeals even at the very last minute go on and on.

There was one execution that I covered that was carried out right before midnight, which would have been the exploration of the order of execution, because there were still ongoing appeals being considered at various levels of courts.

Gavin>> So, a very much fluid situation that we're still watching with you, as you report this, and folks know that South Carolina has had somewhat of a disturbing past when it comes to the death penalty, most notably the execution of 14 year old George Stinney, Jr, back in 1944.

That's a case that really has come back up and again and again over the past few years, especially as we discuss these execution methods, and especially since he's been exonerated 70 years later, after his death.

Can you kind of talk to us about that story and how that fits into this narrative right now?

Meg>> George Stinney at age 14 was the youngest person to be executed in the United States during the last century.

He was convicted after a one day trial of killing two white girls here in South Carolina.

His case has been pointed to over the decades as some would argue a miscarriage of justice, both for the swiftness with which his execution was carried out, but also bringing up questions about potentially executing innocent people, people who are not actually guilty of the crimes of which they were convicted.

At the time, witnesses described how George Stinney's body was so small that the straps for the electric chair didn't really fit him.

and it's always it has been pointed to a lot over the years, particularly as debates over the death penalty come back up as kind of a stark difference of both how Black people in South Carolina were treated and perhaps wrongfully convicted and executed, but also the death penalty overall, and should these methods even be part of our state's laws, and part of the way that justice is meted out?

Again, as you know, his conviction was thrown out in 2014 by a judge who noted that there was a something in place at the time.

She cited coram nobis, which is essentially law that means that a case was handled so poorly at the time by the authorities that there's no remedy to fix it, and so, it all needs to be thrown out.

That's what happened in his case, but it is often referenced whenever the death penalty comes back up here in South Carolina.

Gavin>> And I know we talked about the current situation going on right now in our state with Bernard Moore - sorry - Richard Moore.

And there was concerns from his lawyers that this death penalty, this sentence essentially doesn't really fit the crime that he was convicted for murdering a shopkeeper but not going in there with the intention of, not even having a weapon on him when he went into that convenience store and ended up murdering that shop clerk.

How...does that mesh back?

Do you think that might weigh into a decision about him getting a stay or not, you know, avoiding the firing squad at this point?

Meg>> A lot of those types of arguments are what come up in inmates direct appeals when they are challenging their conviction and death sentence in these kinds of cases.

As we discussed, those are the appeals that Richard Bernard Moore is out of at this point.

...so, a lot of the arguments that his attorneys are going to be continuing to make will reference that, but they also need to, from the attorney's point of view, find pieces of the sentence that he's facing, and pieces of his case and make new arguments based off of in their mind how those don't go together.

Again, and that has been part of something that they've argued in the past and not won on, but I would anticipate that it will continue to be brought up in his new legal arguments.

Gavin>>...with about two minutes Meg, talk to us about the firing squad in South Carolina.

Obviously, it's a new method of execution here.

Talk about the composure how it's going to essentially work out here at Broad River... Correctional Institution where that takes place.

Meg>> State officials have spent months renovating the death chamber and now this is where lethal injection, electrocution and now firing squad executions all take place in the same room.

They had to cut a hole in the brick wall of that chamber so that the volunteer shooters, there will be three of them can point their rifles through the wall at the inmate the accused who will sit in the corner across from them.

bullet resistant glass has also been installed.

There's always been a glass wall between the media of witnesses, like me and the death chamber itself, but they've now reinforced that, and they have also created a new chair, a metal chair into which the inmate will be strapped.

One of the strange things about visually how this plays out is, the state can't move its electric chair.

So, it will still be visible.

albeit, covered during these other executions should they take place via firing squad?

So there have been a lot of renovations, but it's all still going to be in the same death chamber.

Gavin>> And Meg, last question.

You've covered these executions before.

Tell us the role the media plays in covering these moments.

Meg>> I've witnessed seven executions in my role as a reporter for the Associated Press, and we are merely there as a scribe of history to relate to the rest of the world, what we see and what we believe to be the sentence of South Carolina being carried out before us.

That's it.

That's all.

So we just say what we see.

Gavin>> Gotcha.

Well, we'll be following this case closely as we get ready, apparently to start executions again in South Carolina.

That's Associated Press reporter, Meg Kinnard.

Thank you so much.

♪ music fades in ♪ Meg>> Thank you, Gavin.

Gavin>> To stay up to date with the latest news throughout the week, check out the South Carolina Lede.

It's a podcast that I host twice a week that you can find on South Carolina public radio.org or wherever you find podcasts.

For South Carolina ETV, I'm Gavin Jackson.

Be well, South Carolina.

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