Documents: USC trustee baited and shot trapped hawks

University of South Carolina board of trustees member Charles Williams orchestrated an illegal scheme to bait and trap rare red-tailed wild hawks with pigeons and then execute the hawks with a pistol, according to new legal documents.

Williams, 65, killed the hawks so they wouldn’t prey on the “pen-raised quail” he had on his 1,790-acre Orangeburg County plantation, where he had quail-hunting parties, according to the documents.

The documents, called a sentencing memorandum, were filed in U.S. District Court as part of the government’s case against Williams and three associates, who have agreed to plead guilty to wildlife-related charges during a June 6 federal hearing in Charleston before U.S. Magistrate Judge Shiva Hodges.

Gedney Howe, one of the defendants’ lawyers, said late Tuesday that the defense team will be filing its own sentencing memorandum with the court.

Howe declined comment for this story, saying, “What we have to say, we will say in the court.”

Red-tailed hawks are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a long-standing federal law that protects some 800 bird species, including the bald eagle and barn owl.

Although the charges against Williams have been generally known since first being brought in December, the new documents reveal for the first time that Williams baited the hawks, his motive for killing the hawks and details of the government’s case against the four.

The documents also reveal that at the same time Williams was hunting hawks, he was being hunted by state and federal wildlife officials, who had erected seven hidden video surveillance cameras around his plantation to gather indisputable film as evidence of the crimes.

Williams, 65, an Orangeburg lawyer, is charged with seven misdemeanor counts of unlawfully trapping and killing multiple federally protected migratory hawks in 2013 and 2014.

His associates face similar charges. Jimmy Aiken, 56, and John Dantzler, 66, are each charged with taking part with Williams in separate hawk killings. Alejandro Renteria Noyola, 56, faces a single charge of unlawfully killing a hawk.

In the documents, prosecutors say they are seeking a $100,000 fine against Williams and a three-year ban from any hunting activities. They seek a $1,000 fine and a one-year hunting ban against Aiken, Dantzler and Noyola. The government said it seeks a lesser penalty for those three than for Williams because they “acted at his direction.”

At the June 6 hearing, prosecutors want to introduce photographs and video clips of the men shooting the hawks at the upcoming hearing, according to a sentencing memorandum in the case filed by federal prosecutors.

To catch the hawks, Williams and his associates set up a “two-compartment box trap. The lower compartment held a live pigeon, the bait,” and when a hawk swooped down to get the pigeon, the box would trap the hawk inside.

“The videos showed the four defendants tending the traps, setting them, providing water and food to the bait pigeons, checking the traps for hawks, and killing hawks,” the documents said.

“Days often passed between the defendants’ inspection of the traps,” the documents said.

“This meant that the hawks were often caged for extended periods of time, and accordingly suffered from dehydration and hunger and injuries suffered when they frantically tried to escape their metal enclosures,” the documents said.

An investigation into illegal bird-killing activities at Williams’ plantation didn’t start until November, 2013, when S.C. Department of Natural Resources officials received a report from its Operation Game Thief hotline that a hawk was trapped in a cage near a power line on Williams’ plantation.

DNR agents installed a hidden video camera at that site, as well as six others around Williams’ property where agents found more traps. When agents retrieved the video clip at the first site four days later, it showed Aiken removing and discarding the dead pigeon and later shooting the hawk with a handgun, the documents said.

Over the next three months, video surveillance captured Williams shooting three hawks; Aiken, one; Dantzler, one; and Noyla killing a bobcat.

One hawk was trapped “several days in a cage, showing signs of injury from attempts to free itself,” when Williams dropped by and shot it on Feb. 20, 2014, the documents say.

The next day, that hawk was found still alive by agents executing a search warrant on the property. It was taken to the Charleston-area Center for Birds of Prey, “where it had to be euthanized due to the severity of its injuries,” according to the documents.

In all, agents seized 16 box traps and recovered the remains of 28 different hawks, 14 of which had died from gunshot wounds, the documents said. Williams likely had been killing and trapping hawks for years because in 2009, a DNR agent had told Williams to stop trapping hawks on his property, according to the documents.

The charges are misdemeanors, but each count carries a six-month maximum prison sentence and a fine of up to $15,000.

Williams’ two lawyers are state Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, and Howe, a Charleston criminal defense lawyer who has represented such clients as former House Speaker Bobby Harrell. Hutto is in Williams’ law firm.

Williams has numerous political and business connections. Along with Hutto, those connections include his late father, former state Sen. Marshall Williams, a Democrat who was Senate president pro tem at the time of his death in 1995. Williams’ late wife, Karen, was a judge on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia.

Hawks may be killed with federal permission, usually issued for research purposes.

South Carolina Wildlife Federation executive director Ben Gregg said Tuesday that in general the once huge quail population in the state has been dwindling because much of their habitat has been claimed for farmland. Meanwhile, some landowners, including those who raise quail, regard the red-tail hawk as more of a pest than a bird that should be protected by federal law, he said.

“There are people who are really devoted to quail and believe there should be measures taken when it comes to predator control,” Gregg said.

But trapping and killing red-tail hawks is against the law, and like it or not, the hawks “are part of the web of life that people in South Carolina and around the country really respect and really love,” Gregg said.

This story was originally published May 24, 2016 at 8:06 PM with the headline "Documents: USC trustee baited and shot trapped hawks."