S.C. Supreme Court affirms Columbia lawyer's conviction for murder
In State v. Herring, decided December 21st, the South Carolina Supreme Court affirmed Dewain Herring's convictions for murder and pointing and presenting a firearm. Herring was a practicing attorney in Columbia, South Carolina and was disbarred after his conviction in 2007, for shooting and killing the manager of a nightclub that he had been ejected from.
The Court held that it did not violate the Fourth Amendment for officers to peek into Herring's garage window - it was reasonable under the circumstances to check the garage window to ensure their safety, and no evidence was obtained as a result of looking in the garage window anyway. When no-one responded to knocks on the door, the officers obtained a search warrant and returned.
Regarding the search warrant, the Court held that 1) it was supported by probable cause where witnesses described the suspect, his clothes, his car, gave his license number, and the license number was that of a car that was registered to Herring's business; 2) the fact that the warrant contained a different officer's name at the top who did not actually appear in front of the magistrate was a scrivener's error and did not invalidate the warrant; and 3) a subsequent search warrant obtained by SLED over the telephone, by facsimile, and without appearing in person before the magistrate, even if it was invalid (the Court is not clear as to whether it is valid or not), was saved by the good faith exception, because the agents made "a good faith attempt to comply with the statute’s affidavit procedures."
Justices Kittredge and Pleicones wrote a concurrence to point out that there were no exigent circumstances to justify looking into Herring's garage two hours after the shooting, but noted that it did not matter anyway since no evidence resulted from the window-peeking.
