SC Supreme Court weighs ‘flip-flopper’ accused killer’s fate

All five S.C. Supreme Court justices Wednesday seemed to agree that the death penalty case involving Steven Barnes before them was, well, one of a kind.

“I’m trying to figure out why we are here,” Associate Justice Costa Pleicones said at one point during the 45-minute hearing over whether Barnes should have a death sentence that was overturned in 2014 reinstated.

After court, 11th Circuit Solicitor Donnie Myers described the unusual situation this way: “One thing they all realize now is that Barnes is manipulative as all get out and he’ll play with the system.”

In 2010, Myers won a murder conviction and a death penalty sentence against Barnes from an Edgefield County jury.

That case involved a 2001 killing in which evidence prosecutors put up showed that Barnes, then 23, led a loose gang of high school seniors who hung out with him. He kept them supplied with money, girls and cars.

After Barnes accused one of his followers, Samuel Sturrup, 16, of stealing from him, he drove Sturrup to a remote part of Edgefield County, where he had other followers shoot Sturrup in various parts of the body, then shot him dead.

In the middle of his trial, held in Edgefield, Barnes fired his attorneys and asked the trial judge to let him represent himself. Judge Knox McMahon refused.

After he was convicted and sent to South Carolina’s Death Row, Barnes appealed and won a new trial on the grounds that McMahon had denied him his constitutional right to represent himself.

In 2014, the S.C. Supreme Court agreed and granted Barnes a new trial.

Once again, Myers is seeking the death penalty.

But after Barnes filed a motion saying he wanted court-appointed lawyers for his new trial, Myers – assisted by the S.C. Attorney General’s office – filed a motion with the Supreme Court.

The motion – which was argued Wednesday – was that since Barnes already had one trial with court-appointed lawyers, if he got new court-appointed lawyers appointed, he should have his death penalty and conviction reinstated.

To prosecutors, if Barnes wants a new trial, he should have one without lawyers, just like he did the first trial – or else get his sentence and death penalty reinstated.

“We have the right to reinstate because he received what he is asking for,” assistant attorney general Melody Brown.

But defense lawyer Jeff Bloom argued that Barnes should return to a new trial with “all his constitutional rights,” and that includes the right to choose to represent himself or to have court-appointed counsel.

Chief Justice Jean Toal raised a more fundamental question: “Here we’ve got the extreme example in this case of someone who could certainly be be viewed as manipulating the system, flip-flopping constantly so that he never gets tried...What can we do?”

Bloom told Toal that the trial judge is able to take any necessary steps to protect the system.

One thing was clear during Wednesday’s hearing – Toal is not amused when cell phones go off. When a cell phone interrupted an argument by Brown, the chief justice halted proceedings and expelled a man from the courtroom.

Justices did not decide on the issue Wednesday.

This story was originally published April 8, 2015 at 4:56 PM with the headline "SC Supreme Court weighs ‘flip-flopper’ accused killer’s fate."