The S.C. Department of Corrections has asked a trial judge to go back and change a ruling which chastised the agency for its pervasive mistreatment of mentally ill inmates in the state’s prison system. 
The department’s motion requests that Common Pleas Judge J. Michael Baxley of Richland County alter or amend his Jan. 8 order granting judgment in favor of a class of more than 2,500 mentally ill inmates.
Those inmates joined up in 2005 with Protection and Advocacy for People with Disabilities, a Columbia-based nonprofit corporation, and filed suit with the help of a pro bono legal team that included Daniel J. Westbrook of Nelson, Mullins, Riley & Scarborough in Columbia.
In its motion to amend, the corrections department contends that Baxley’s order failed to address several of the legal arguments it raised during the litigation. For instance, the department says its ability to treat prisoners is limited by the money it receives from the legislature. It also argues that the court’s order, which gives the department until early July to draft a written proposal to fix its broken system, is “far in excess of what might be necessary to remedy any alleged violations.”
In response to the motion, Westbrook said that the trial judge had already ruled on most of the legal issues raised. “The effect of the motion is to delay things further by postponing the deadline for the department to file its appeal,” he said.
But Clark Newsom, a spokesman for the department, balked at the suggestion that the motion was a stalling tactic.
“We do not believe that the order addresses our arguments, and no final rulings in writing were ever made on those issues,” he wrote in an email. “We believe that the motion was necessary to preserve these issues for appellate review.”
The lawsuit and Baxley’s scathing order against the department, which garnered national media attention, shined light on the subhuman conditions that mentally ill inmates are subjected to in South Carolina. For example, one prisoner died after being beaten, stripped naked and left for days lying in feces and vomit on a cell floor littered with more than a dozen trays of rotting, uneaten food.
The order is a black eye for the department. Earlier this month when new prisons chief Bryan P. Stirling stood before the Senate Corrections and Penology Committee seeking approval to become the agency’s permanent director, committee chair Sen. Mike Fair told his fellow committee members not to question Stirling about the suit.
Westbrook attended the hearing and said he was “surprised by Sen. Fair’s request, as this lawsuit and Judge Baxley’s order is an important public issue that requires public debate.” He noted that one freshman senator, Marlon Kimpson, a Democrat from Charleston, disobeyed Fair, a Republican.
As of January 15 the state had already spent more than $838,000 defending the suit, according to Newsom. The cost to taxpayers will be even greater if the state moves forward with an appeal, although that might not happen. Stirling sent a letter on Feb. 4 to Westbrook and his law partner proposing that they reopen settlement discussions.
Follow Phillip Bantz on Twitter @SCLWBantz