Former state Rep. Mike Pitts
made anti-immigrant and racially charged remarks seemingly at odds with South
Carolina’s judicial code. He sailed through an appointment process as a
magistrate nominee with little scrutiny and no debate.
by Joseph Cranney, The Post and Courier
Nov. 29, 5 a.m. EST
When South Carolina lawmakers
confirmed a batch of new magistrates this year, one nominee stood out from the
pack: Mike Pitts.
The former state House member
had made a name for himself in Columbia as a staunch defender of the
Confederate flag, and on Facebook he has penned anti-immigration screeds and
used racially charged language. In May, for example, he posted a photo of New
Jersey Sen.
Cory Booker, an African American Democrat running for president. His
caption: “Cory Booker alway [sic] looks like he just hit crack real hard.”
None of this, however,
prompted any discussion in June, when the state Senate confirmed Pitts along
with 33 other nominees for the lower courts.
Bottom of Form
Unlike South Carolina’s felony
and appellate court judges, magistrates are not subjected to legislative
hearings before lawmakers sign off on their appointments. In fact, there’s
rarely any public debate at all. Nominations typically sail through the upper
chamber with a single voice vote.
Although magistrates oversee
mostly misdemeanor matters, their authority is substantial; each year, they
decide hundreds of thousands of cases, including criminal ones that can send
someone to prison for months or saddle them with thousands of dollars in fines.
But the confirmation process
allows new recruits to escape public scrutiny and sitting magistrates to remain
on the bench even after they’ve been disciplined for misconduct, an
investigation by The Post and Courier and ProPublica found.
Some appointees have gone on
to make racist and sexist comments from the bench.
Magistrate Willie Bethune in
Clarendon County, for example, said a defendant was attractive and asked her to
show off her bellybutton. He was later accused of pressuring that woman into
giving him sexual favors. While he denied the charges, he resigned amid an
investigation by the Office of Disciplinary Counsel, which polices
judges and lawyers in the state.
Charleston Magistrate James
Gosnell, who is white, used a racial slur during a bond hearing for an African
American defendant and was reprimanded by the disciplinary office; he described
it as an ill-considered attempt to get the man to change his path in life. The
judge remains on the bench today, reappointed in May.
Beaufort County Magistrate
Peter Lamb called crack cocaine “a black man’s disease” and later resigned. As
part of an
agreement with the state Supreme Court, he acknowledged misconduct in that
instance — and in others — and promised to never seek judicial office again,
without permission.
The Post and Courier and
ProPublica found Pitts’ Facebook page while researching the backgrounds of all 319
magistrates in South Carolina. Like many magistrates, he doesn’t have a law
license; to qualify for nomination to the lower courts, applicants need only to
earn an undergraduate degree and pass a basic competency exam. Pitts served as
a police officer in South Carolina for a decade before retiring in 1987.
Several of his posts appear at odds with key tenets of the state’s judicial
code of conduct, which stresses impartiality and strict avoidance of words or
actions that demonstrate bias or prejudice.
In a November 2017 post, he
complained about people “from the Middle East” in Walmart and wrote, “after
being subject to this incident I now support shutting down all immigration
until we stop the demise of our culture.” And he has been recently photographed
wearing a shirt reading, “Welcome to America Learn the Damn Language!”
In another post, Pitts
criticized transgender people, saying “they aren’t sure what the hell they
are.”
Pitts, a Republican who
recently took the bench, didn’t respond to messages left by phone and email.
Civil rights advocates
condemned Pitts’ remarks and called for his removal.
“A person with such racist and
xenophobic views should not be placed in a position that will inevitably impact
the lives of citizens in a diverse community,” said Ibrahim Hooper, national
communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“Magistrate Pitts should be removed from his post in order to maintain the
objectivity and impartiality of the South Carolina judicial system.”
Brenda Murphy, president of
the South Carolina chapter of the NAACP, said her group is “totally against”
the idea of Pitts donning the robe. “We would not want someone who has made
those comments appointed as a magistrate in a local community,” she said.
Some state lawmakers also
questioned Pitts’ fitness for the bench.
Republican state Rep. Gary
Clary, a former state circuit judge, said the posts could be “grounds for
recusal” in cases where people of color or transgender people appear before
Pitts.
“That’s the reason judges
don’t normally have Facebook and Twitter accounts,” Clary said. “You are
supposed to be fair and impartial.”
State Sen. Dick Harpootlian, a
Democrat, went further.
“None of us were aware of
these posts, or his ethnic and racially insensitive comments, which I think
disqualify him as a fair or impartial judge,” Harpootlian, a longtime trial
lawyer, said after The Post and Courier described Pitts’ posts.
“If I was Muslim or of Middle
Eastern descent, I would be fearful of appearing in front of him.”
A spokesman for Gov. Henry
McMaster said no one brought the posts to his attention before McMaster, a
Republican, signed off on Pitts’ appointment this year. The governor declined
to expand on the issue.
Chief Justice Donald Beatty of
the South Carolina Supreme Court, who oversees all of the state’s court
officials, also declined to comment.
A Republican who served 13
years in the legislature, Pitts has long stoked controversy. When state leaders
pressed to remove the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds in 2015 after
the mass shooting at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church, Pitts was a chief
opponent.
The following year, he
proposed legislation to require journalists to register with the state
government or face fines. And in 2018, Pitts co-sponsored a bill requiring
South Carolina lawmakers to consider seceding from the Union if the federal
government “confiscates legally purchased firearms.” Neither measure passed.
More recently, his bid to run
the state’s land conservation agency fell apart amid concerns that Pitts, an
ex-cop, wasn’t qualified for the job. Critics said the move was a political
gift to Pitts following retirement from the House last year. He withdrew from
consideration, saying the “aggressive inquisition” he faced during a
confirmation hearing had harmed his health after a heart attack last year. “I
tired quickly and realized that my cognitive skills have been affected,” he
wrote in his withdrawal letter.
But within months, Pitts was a
candidate for a magistrate seat in Laurens County, a mostly rural area in the
upper portion of the state, about an hour from the Blue Ridge Mountains. A
quarter of the area’s residents are black. “I have applied for jobs in several
different locations in private industry and other places,” he told the
Greenwood Index-Journal. “I’m not ready to retire and I’m either too old,
too experienced or too hot a potato.”
This time, with the backing of
his Republican colleague, state Sen. Danny Verdin, he faced far less scrutiny.
“The bottom line is, this is a job I’m well qualified for,” Pitts told the
Index-Journal, citing his law enforcement background.
Unlike any other state in the
country, South Carolina allows state senators to hand-pick magistrate judges.
Because they are considered local appointments, senators almost never question
selections outside their delegation. The governor signs off on the
appointments, but largely defers to the legislative chamber.
The process for selecting
magistrates varies from county to county.
In the Charleston metro area,
for example, the eight-member senate delegation convenes public meetings to
review and discuss the qualifications of potential candidates. Greenville, with
seven senators, operates much the same way.
But in a dozen of the state’s
46 counties, including Laurens, the selection of magistrates lies in the hands
of a single senator.
That meant Pitts only required
Verdin’s backing.
The Post and Courier asked the
lawmaker about Pitts’ Facebook posts, but Verdin declined to review them.
“That’s not necessary,” he
said. “I will have no comment.”
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