SC Supreme Court upholds perjury conviction and prison sentence of ex-Rep. Harrison

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in January 2021.

Perjury charges and a prison sentence against powerful former state lawmaker Rep. Jim Harrison of Richland County were upheld by the S.C. Supreme Court on Wednesday.

The major import of the 36-page ruling — which included a main ruling and two sharply conflicting opinions by two different justices — is that Harrison will head off to state prison to begin serving an 18-month prison sentence.

Harrison will be the first state lawmaker in years to go to prison on corruption-related charges.

But he was just not any lawmaker — for years, he was the powerful chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and controlled the flow of much legislation through the House of Representatives.

While he was Judiciary Committee chair, Harrison accepted secret payments totaling some $800,000 from a prominent Columbia consulting firm, Richard Quinn and Associates (RQA), whose clients had an interest in blocking or passing legislation in the General Assembly. The Richland County jury that heard the case in 2018 decided that Harrison had broken the law by accepting the payments and then lied to the state grand jury — committing perjury — about the reason for the payments.

“Appellant (Harrison) must serve the maximum eighteen-month sentence imposed by the circuit court,” the court ruled in its Wednesday opinion.

Although the high court upheld Harrison’s 2018 conviction on perjury, a majority of the five justices ruled that David Pascoe, the special state prosecutor on the case, lacked the authority to prosecute Harrison on the misconduct charges that Harrison was found guilty of — along with the perjury charges — at that trial.

“The extent of the power granted to Solicitor Pascoe lies at the heart of this (Harrison’s appeal of the guilty verdicts at this 2018 trial),” the Supreme Court said. “This is a difficult case, one that has resulted in a sharply divided Court.”

Harrison could still be tried at a later day on the misconduct charges. But it will be up to Attorney General Alan Wilson to have his office prosecute Harrison or appoint a special prosecutor to do that job.

Harrison was one of Pascoe’s highest-profile targets so far in a wide-ranging multi-year probe of corruption in the General Assembly. His trial exposed how easy it is for people to make secret payments to South Carolina lawmakers.

Since 2014, Pascoe has secured convictions and guilty pleas of four lawmakers and has outstanding criminal charges against one other. During that time, Pascoe’s work has survived numerous court challenges by defense attorneys and even Attorney General Alan Wilson.

In 2014, Wilson first appointed Pascoe as a special prosecutor but later repeatedly sought to have him removed from the case after Pascoe made it clear that some of his expanding list of investigative targets would include some of Wilson’s associates.

Impact on prior convictions

Under the high court’s Wednesday interpretation of Pascoe’s authority, it is likely that convictions of three of the former lawmakers — former House Speaker Bobby Harrell, R-Charleston; former Rep. Rick Quinn Jr., R- Lexington; and former Rep. Jim Merrill, R-Berkeley — will stand.

Harrell, Merrill and Quinn Jr. were mentioned in a 2013 once-confidential State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) report about corruption in the General Assembly, and Pascoe had the authority to investigate and prosecute those men, according to the Supreme Court.

It also seems likely that Pascoe’s conviction of a fourth former lawmaker, Sen. John Courson, R-Richland, will stand.

Although Courson was not mentioned in the SLED report with Harrell, Quinn Jr. and Merrill, Pascoe in the course of his and SLED’s investigation discovered in going through the RQA consulting firm’s financial statements that Courson had been for years accepting secret payments from RQA. Presented with clear evidence of checks written to him and deposited in his personal bank account, Courson resigned his longtime position as senator and pleaded guilty to misconduct charges.

Because Courson made a voluntary confession of guilt and pleaded guilty, he cannot now claim that Pascoe had no authority to prosecute the case, the high court said.

“When a criminal defendant has solemnly admitted in open court that he is in fact guilty of the offense with which he is charged, he may not thereafter raise independent claims relating to the deprivation of constitutional rights,” the court said.

It is also unclear whether a pending criminal charge of perjury by Pascoe’s state grand jury against former Rep. Tracy Edge, R-Horry, will stand. Edge was not mentioned in the SLED report; his charges grew out Pascoe’s multi-year investigation.

“We are reviewing today’s complex opinion to see what application it may have to Mr. Edge’s case,” Edge’s attorney, Joe McCulloch, of Columbia, said Wednesday.

Harrison went to trial

Of all of Pascoe’s targets, Harrison was the only one who chose to go to trial and fight the charges before a jury.

Harrison’s trial and convictions, which took place in state criminal court in Richland County in October 2018, attracted statewide attention. Harrison’s appeal went to the Supreme Court. The high court’s opinion has been awaited for months.

Pascoe emailed the following statement to The State: “Today’s decision is a win for South Carolina. Because of relentless work by SLED agents and prosecutors, State House corruption has been exposed and now detailed by our highest court. The immediate impact of the opinion is that the former Chairman of the S.C. House Judiciary Committee is going to prison.”

Pascoe added he will “need several days to analyze the three different opinions before I decide what the State’s next move will be.”

Attorney General’s office spokesman Robert Kittle released this statement: “We are pleased with today’s sweeping recognition by the Supreme Court of the constitutional powers of the Attorney General in criminal matters. This ruling is broader than one specific case and it firmly establishes the role of the Attorney General in future cases.”

The varying positions taken by Supreme Court justices were divided this way:

▪ Four justices — Chief Justice Don Beatty and associate Justices Kaye Hearn, John Kittredge and John Cannon Few — voted to affirm Harrison’s perjury charges and Pascoe’s authority to prosecute him on those charges.

▪ Three justices — Kittredge, Few and Buck James — voted to reverse and remand for a new trial the misconduct charges.

▪ Justice Hearn, joined by Beatty, wrote that Pascoe had the authority to prosecute Harrison on both the misconduct and perjury charges.

▪ Justice James wrote that Pascoe had no authority to prosecute either charge.

Pascoe had contended that once appointed to investigate corruption in the General Assembly, he had clear authority to investigate new targets if he turned up incriminating evidence against them. The Supreme Court said Pascoe only had authority to investigate those targets that had been clearly identified by the Attorney General.

The Supreme Court said the important thing about its ruling was that Harrison was going to prison.

“As a practical matter, the divergent views of the Court may appear to be much ado about nothing, for—following the result of our decision here—Appellant must serve the maximum eighteen-month sentence imposed by the circuit court.”

The Supreme Court’s opinion did not mention a key figure in Pascoe’s ongoing corruption probe — Richard Quinn Sr., whose firm RQA made the secret payments to Courson and Harrison.

Quinn Sr. now faces multiple perjury charges based on statements he made to Pascoe’s grand jury. Those charges, which were made in 2019, are pending.

This story was originally published January 20, 2021 at 10:24 AM.