The South Carolina Court of Appeals has reversed a $150,000 malicious prosecution verdict awarded against the York County Sheriff’s Office, saying that the only reasonable conclusion that a sheriff’s deputy could have drawn from the evidence he encountered at a chaotic crime scene was that there was probable cause to issue a warrant for the plaintiff’s arrest.
Russell Shane Carter was charged with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature after a 2012 incident in which he beat a man with a baseball bat after the other man refused to leave his property. Prosecutors declined to pursue the charge after deciding that Carter’s actions were protected by the state’s “stand your ground law” and other theories of self-defense.
Carter later sued York County Sheriff Bruce Bryant for false arrest and malicious prosecution. At trial, York County Circuit Court Judge John C. Hayes directed a verdict for Bryant on the false arrest claim but let the malicious prosecution claim proceed to the jury, which ruled in Carter’s favor. Hayes later denied a motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict (JNOV), and both sides appealed aspects of the court’s rulings.
Judge D. Garrison Hill, writing for a unanimous Court of Appeals panel in a Jan. 15 opinion, affirmed the directed verdict in Bryant’s favor on the false arrest claims, but reversed the denial of his JNOV motion, concluding that Carter’s arrest had been based on probable cause.
Ordinarily, a jury decides whether probable cause existed in a malicious prosecution case. But in this case—where the ostensible victim had been beaten bloody, Carter had admitted to bludgeoning him repeatedly with a baseball bat after he’d hit the ground, and witnesses gave conflicting accounts of the incident—there was only one reasonable conclusion a jury should have been able to draw, Hill said.
“In assessing whether probable cause existed, we must view things as they appeared to the officers arriving at this chaotic scene. It is an inquiry guided by common sense, and one that acknowledges human conflict is messy and tense encounters can produce differing perspectives on what happened,” Hill wrote. “Recognizing that lack of clarity, at the warrant stage the law does not demand certainty, clear and convincing proof, proof beyond a reasonable doubt, or even proof by the greater weight of the evidence. Instead, the law insists on something less, but something more than reasonable suspicion: it demands a ‘fair probability.’”
Hill noted that there was no evidence that the officers acted in bad faith, and although prosecutors ultimately declined to pursue the charge based on self-defense, an assistant solicitor testified that the arrest was good, and the officers’ investigation solid. Further, while the stand-your-ground law offers immunity from prosecution, it does not provide any immunity from arrest.
Chris Mills and Alex Postic, both of Columbia, represented Carter.
“We disagree with the Court of Appeals but respect and accept their decision. We are evaluating whether to pursue further appeal to the South Carolina Supreme Court,” he said. “A York County jury heard the evidence and determined that law enforcement acted unlawfully. We think the law places that decision in the hands of a jury.”
Andrew Lindemann of Lindemann, Davis & Hughes and Robert Garfield of Crowe LaFave, both in Columbia, represented Bryant. They did not respond to a request for comment.
The 14-page decision is Carter v. Bryant (Lawyers Weekly No. 011-006-20). The full text of the opinion is available online at sclawyersweekly.com.
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