Midlands attorney secretly bugged by SC law enforcement in Greg Leon murder case

South Carolina state law enforcement secretly recorded a conversation between a prominent Midlands attorney and a potential defense witness in the upcoming murder trial of Mexican restaurant operator Greg Leon.

The attorney, state Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-Richland, told Judge Debra McCaslin Monday in a Lexington County courtroom that he objected to the secret taping but there is apparently no prohibition against the surreptitious recording of an attorney talking to a witness.

“I was somewhat indignant thinking it was not allowed,” Harpootlian told the judge.

Rick Hubbard, the 11th Circuit solicitor, said Harpootlian was not the target of the wired witness, whom Hubbard said was paid by Leon to tell Harpootlian a story that might be used to exonerate Leon at his upcoming trial in January.

That witness is the subject of a recent criminal charge of witness tampering brought last month against Leon, in addition to the murder charge he is already facing.

More than 40 friends and family came to support Leon Monday — so many that some had to stay outside the courtroom.

State Attorney General’s office prosecutor Megan Burchstead and Phil Turner, an agent with the State Law Enforcement Division, were both in the courtroom Monday and oversaw the bugging of the witness. They both declined to comment.

McCaslin said Leon’s murder trial will start in January. It was previously set for August.

The trial has already been pushed back for years, and McCaslin said she would not push it back again.

“It’s the oldest case on my docket,” McCaslin said. “I am not going to delay this case any more.”

SC judge declines to revoke Greg Leon’s bond

Leon was charged with murder in 2016 after he killed his wife’s alleged lover, Arturo Bravo.

Leon, who admitted to the killing — he told a 911 operator, “I shot my wife’s lover” — has pleaded not guilty and said he acted in self-defense.

The case gained notoriety because Leon is well-known across the Midlands for his chain of popular Mexican restaurants that employ hundreds of people, and because the killing took place on Valentine’s Day in a public parking lot. The victim was a member of a Mexican drug smuggling cartel, Leon’s defense attorneys have said.

Last month, Leon was charged with perjury by SLED, which said in a warrant that Leon provided false testimony related to his pending murder charge. A one-page arrest warrant served June 24 says that on or about Dec. 3, 2019, Leon did “knowingly and willingly, and without the lawful authority to do so, act in concert with (redacted) and others to provide false testimony” to help Leon in the defense of his pending murder charge in Lexington County.

The warrant says the offense happened between Dec. 3, 2019, and Feb. 7, 2022.

Jack Swerling, Leon’s attorney in the perjury case, told The State last month that Leon “denies the allegations that have been made that he was in any way suborning any perjury. We vigorously intend to contest the charges.”

The perjury case will be prosecuted by the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office.

Hubbard had sought Monday’s hearing, arguing that because Leon had tampered with a witness, his current $500,000 bond should be revoked and he should go to jail until his January murder trial.

“He (Leon) is on a recording getting a witness to lie,” so obviously the current bond isn’t working, Hubbard told the judge. “It’s a violation of his bond.”

But Harpootlian told the judge that in the six-and-a-half years since the killing, Leon has not tried to flee nor is he a danger to anyone in the community — an assertion the judge said she agreed with.

“He’s not going anywhere. He’s not going to hurt anybody,” Harpootlian said, adding the witness tampering charge against Leon is so flimsy a jury would acquit him.

But, the judge said, Leon better not misbehave or he will suffer consequences, indicating she would send him to jail if he broke any conditions while free on bond. Although Leon can leave home for certain limited purposes, one of his bond conditions states that he can only be at his restaurants from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., she said.

“You will be home at 6 p.m.,” she told Leon.

The attorney general’s office and SLED were brought into the case in 2019 by Hubbard to investigate the possibility of witness tampering. Hubbard said he asked SLED to look into the witness tampering matter because he wanted an impartial agency to investigate a matter involving Leon’s lawyer.

“We asked the attorney general to review it independently,” Hubbard said.

Monday’s hearing set up two well-known attorneys — Burchstead and Harpootlian — against one another again.

The two are opposing each other in one of the South Carolina’s most prominent ongoing murder and fraud cases: the high-profile proceedings against disbarred Hampton attorney Alex Murdaugh.

Grand jury indictments have charged Murdaugh with murdering his wife and son in June 2021, and embezzling more than $8 million from vulnerable clients, his former law firm, friends and other lawyers.

Another irony in the case is that Harpootlian represents Leon along with Columbia attorney Eric Bland, who played a major role last fall in exposing frauds committed by Murdaugh and getting law enforcement to investigate them. Over the years, Harpootlian and Bland have sometimes worked together on cases and sometimes opposed each other.

Bland said Monday he was pleased with the judge’s decision, saying it split the differences of the prosecution down the middle.

“It gave equal justice to both sides,” said Bland, explaining that while Hubbard achieved tighter restrictions on Leon until trial, the defense succeeded in keeping their client out of jail.

But Bland stressed that law enforcement should not be able to secretly put a wire on a defense witness who is going to talk with a lawyer for the defense unless that lawyer is a legitimate suspect in a criminal conspiracy.

“It violates that defendant’s right not to have his work product discovered by the prosecution,” Bland said.

Bland is representing Leon in the perjury case along with Swerling, a veteran Columbia defense attorney.

As part of her ruling, McCaslin ordered Burchstead and SLED agent Turner to turn over their entire file on the case to Leon’s defense attorneys.

This story was originally published July 18, 2022 at 4:03 PM.