Valentine’s Day killing: SC judge keeps Mexican restaurant owner Leon’s file open

A South Carolina judge ruled Friday that the public filings in the Valentine’s Day killing case of well-known Midlands Mexican restaurant operator Greg Leon will stay open.

“I’m going to deny the request to seal the court file,” S.C. Judge Eugene “Bubba” Griffith said Friday.

Lexington County prosecutor Shawn Graham had asked Griffith to seal the public file in the county clerk’s office to prevent adverse publicity that might unduly prejudice jurors in Leon’s upcoming trial.

Leon, 52, who operates a chain of Mexican restaurants in the Midlands, is charged with first degree murder in the killing of his wife’s alleged lover and could be sentenced to a minimum of 30 years in prison if found guilty. His lawyers are seeking a jury trial.

“This case has received and will continue to receive intense media coverage as the trial approaches,” said Graham, the 11th Judicial Circuit deputy solicitor. Sealing the record would “ensure that neither side is prejudiced by information circulating in the media.”

Graham told Griffith, “I welcome the press ... but what the state (the prosecution) wants is to have this case tried in the courtroom and not the press.”

All he wanted, Graham said, was to have “a fair trial for the state, and a fair trial for the defendant.”

In arguments to Griffith before he ruled, Leon’s attorneys — Chris Kenney and State Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-Richland — argued that just because a case is of high public interest, that doesn’t mean the usual documents kept in an open court file have to be kept secret.

“Judicial proceedings and court records are presumptively open to the public under the common law, the First Amendment of the federal constitution and the state constitution,” Harpootlian and Kenney argued in a brief to Griffith.

Moreover, Graham had not made any specific showing that harm will result from keeping the file open, and Griffith can always ask prospective jurors in a process called voir dire if they can give Leon a fair trial, Harpootlian and Kenney argued.

Graham said his motion to seal court records was prompted by a January report in The State newspaper. That article quoted from a document filed by Leon’s lawyers that asserted Leon had good reasons for killing his wife’s alleged lover on Valentine’s Day 2016 in a deserted ride-sharing public parking lot near I-20 and U.S. 378.

The story, published Jan. 3, asserted that the man Leon shot and killed, Arturo Bravo Santos, 28, not only had ties to the violent Mexican drug cartel known as Los Zetas, but Santos had forced sex on his wife and was repeatedly raping her.

At the time, Santos was threatening two other women with physical violence to get money and sex from them, the document said.

The document also asserted that Leon had shot and killed Santos in self-defense. Using deadly force to protect oneself is a valid defense in a trial.

A specific trial date was not set Friday. But attorneys said it would likely be sometime in June.

This story was originally published March 9, 2020 at 5:00 AM.