I passed by Wood Brothers Store in Green Pond the other day, and felt a pang of loss. The change in the air is not just the first hint of Fall. I've mentioned before that the Public Defender system is changing in the Palmetto State from a county-based system to a more centralized Circuit-based system.
The Magistrate system within Colleton County is centralizing as well. The County is divided into various geographical districts. Each district has its own magistrate. The County at large has Magistrate Campbell. Sniders has Magistrate Cobb. Green Pond's current magistrate is Magistrate McLeod. For years, if a citizen had a small claim, they'd go to their local magistrate to file a complaint. If a citizen had a criminal claim, and law-enforcement didn't want to take out a warrant, the citizen went to his or her local magistrate to swear to the facts giving rise to the beef, and, if the magistrate felt there was anything to the allegations, he or she would issue a warrant. With centralization, the magistrates still have their titles, but the outposts at the far corners of the county have been abandoned. Everything is now done in the County Seat, Walterboro. There are benefits, of course, to centralization. Walterboro is much more convenient for law enforcement, the Solictor's attorney, and the Public Defender's Office. Staff can be more efficiently used (and, sadly for the employees, probably eventually reduced). Records can be kept in one place, so that oversight from Columbia is easier.
So, what's the down-side? The magistrate was part of the fabric of these little communities. The magistrate's office was a place people gathered. For years, the Green Pond Magistrate was Richard Wood, he of Wood Brothers Store. The Green Pond magistrate's office was in a corner of his store.
You could pay a traffic ticket, get your fishing license, and buy a barbeque sandwich, bait and a six pack of beer all in the same place. Gone. All gone. Magistrate Cobb's office had its own charm. When you drove up, you were greeted by a pack of dogs. He musta had seven or eight of them, and they trotted up in a not unkind lope just to let you know they were there. Alas, no more dog day afternoons in Sniders, either.
I passed by Wood Brothers Store in Green Pond the other day, and felt a pang of loss. The change in the air is not just the first hint of Fall. I've mentioned before that the Public Defender system is changing in the Palmetto State from a county-based system to a more centralized Circuit-based system. 
The Magistrate system within Colleton County is centralizing as well. The County is divided into various geographical districts. Each district has its own magistrate. The County at large has Magistrate Campbell. Sniders has Magistrate Cobb. Green Pond's current magistrate is Magistrate McLeod. For years, if a citizen had a small claim, they'd go to their local magistrate to file a complaint. If a citizen had a criminal claim, and law-enforcement didn't want to take out a warrant, the citizen went to his or her local magistrate to swear to the facts giving rise to the beef, and, if the magistrate felt there was anything to the allegations, he or she would issue a warrant. With centralization, the magistrates still have their titles, but the outposts at the far corners of the county have been abandoned. Everything is now done in the County Seat, Walterboro. There are benefits, of course, to centralization. Walterboro is much more convenient for law enforcement, the Solictor's attorney, and the Public Defender's Office. Staff can be more efficiently used (and, sadly for the employees, probably eventually reduced). Records can be kept in one place, so that oversight from Columbia is easier.
So, what's the down-side? The magistrate was part of the fabric of these little communities. The magistrate's office was a place people gathered. For years, the Green Pond Magistrate was Richard Wood, he of Wood Brothers Store. The Green Pond magistrate's office was in a corner of his store. 
You could pay a traffic ticket, get your fishing license, and buy a barbeque sandwich, bait and a six pack of beer all in the same place. Gone. All gone. Magistrate Cobb's office had its own charm. When you drove up, you were greeted by a pack of dogs. He musta had seven or eight of them, and they trotted up in a not unkind lope just to let you know they were there. Alas, no more dog day afternoons in Sniders, either.
9 comments:
In Land O Lakes they had a BBQ and Taxidermy shop in the same building. That one just plain scared me, so seperate is sometimes even better than equal in the South!
Kind of like my LOL house.
Definitely the BBQ, but NOT the taxidermy !
That wadint near where you ate that possum, was it, Ange?
See, Lynne, it's all about efficiency.
I used to think that these small towns were square and scary. Now I think they're charming. And comforting.
A little bit of all four, I think.
Sorry, it sounds like a good idea. I'm all for local control, but that seems a little too local to me. I didn't realize how small your county was (populationwise; thanks wiki). Here in Illinois, our counties are broken up into townships. Not exactly sure what my township government does (beyond taking a small chunk of my property taxes and annoying me with their yard signs during election time).
Yeah, it is not a bad idea in theory, and it results in more uniformity and predictability in results. Judges act differently when they have their own turf, and are more inclined to do what they think is right than playing it safe. I could get a crappy case dismissed more easily in Western Court than in Central Court because of the magistrates in those areas knew the people in their areas. Now (question mark) It takes a lot longer and instead of a Magistrate throwing out a stupid case, a prosecutor has to get involved (or even a jury, which is good if there is a genuine question of fact, but not so good if everyone knows a case is crap, but is intimidated by inertia). Another casualty of this new need for predicability is an edict from Court Administration for magistrates not to issue citizen warrants anymore. As a Defense attorney, I should like the rule, because police are less likely to get stupid warrants than ordinary citizens are, but as a citizen, I dont like it much because it takes rights away from ordinary citizens.
How does it take rights away from ordinary citizens? Which rights?
I've never thought about this before because everything that happens (in a legal sense) in my county happens at the county courthouse (been there, done that, don't want to do it again).
What Joe Citizen has lost is the right to go directly to a judge to get a warrant. Now if a citizen cannot convince a police officer to go to the judge for him, he is out of luck. Used to be in borderline cases the officer would explain warrant procedures to the citizen, and the citizen could go directly to the judge. There may be times where an officer has a grudge against the citizen and refuses to procure the warrant, leaving Joe out of luck. However, while I know that some officers have bias against some individuals, and lament the theoretical loss of rights, in the real world this is actually a good change. Generally, if a citizen can't convince a cop to get him/her a warrant, it's not a very good case (actually, one exception is where the crime is complex and the police don't understand it. I've got a couple of bank fraud cases that are fairly complicated, and bank reps had to get the warrants because they couldn't make the police understand the crime. Complicated cases are rare is this small county, so there is no reason for the sheriff's office to specially train its officers to understand financial scheme or open a "bank fraud" unit, but those are crimes that couldn't be prosecuted under the new system).
As to the loss of magistrates having their own special territories, the loss is the opposite: the magistrates, confident in the own place and being familiar with the parties involved, can issue "Mayberry" type solutions and informally resolve the problems without issuing warrants. Another big change in consolidation is a change in the make-up of juries in magistrate cases. Where juries are drawn from the particular area where the crime was allegedly committed, the jurors are likely to know the players. I'm not sure whether this is a generally good change or a bad one, but it's definitely a change. I can tell you that jury pool makes a HUGE difference in some types of cases, like DUI. I've never lost a jury trial in a DUI case in Ridgeland (out of maybe six). I've never won one in Hilton Head (also five or six). I've lost other types of cases in Ridgeland, and won other types of cases in HHI, but not for DUI.
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