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15. Percentage of litigation:
Civil - 1%
Criminal - 99%
Domestic - 0

16. Percentage of cases in trial courts:
Jury - 100%
Non-Jury - 0%
Sole Counsel

17. Five (5) of the most significant litigated matters in either trial or appellate court:
(a) State v. Tellis Edwards. Tellis Edwards wanted to be a pimp like his older brother. Unfortunately, the first girl he tried to make a prostitute was a young girl who was carrying his baby. Two months after Tellis Edwards left the 15-year-old girl's naked, pregnant, hanger-whipped body dead on her living room floor with her hands, feet and throat bound with telephone and extension cords, he robbed another woman with a lock-blade knife that had brass knuckles for a handle and "assassin" engraved on the blade. Tellis Edwards was convicted at trial of the Armed Robbery and subsequently pleaded guilty to the Voluntary Manslaughter of the 15 year old.
(b) State v. Alfred Fickens. Nineteen-year-old Alfred Fickens broke into the home of a sixty-eight year old woman and raped her. This woman and her mother had lived in this home for 50 years, but fear forced them to move. Before the moving process was complete, Alfred Fickens broke into their home twice more. Alfred Fickens went to trial three times, was convicted twice, and is serving life plus 30 years.
(c) State v. Stanley Harley. Stanley Harley and four other men abducted two young girls from the parking lot of an East Bay Street tavern. The men took the girls to an

18. Five (5) civil appeals:

N/A

22. Public Office: Appointed Assistant Solicitor in 1984 (serving continuously since then)

40. Expenditures Relating to Candidacy:
Stationery $84.00
Postage $10.00
Telephone Calls $25.00
Annual Leave $720.00

46. Civic, charitable, educational, social and fraternal organizations:
St. Philip's Episcopal Church; Charleston Interfaith Crisis Ministries; River's Bend Homeowners' Association, President of Board of Directors; Lowcountry Georgia Bulldog Club; Carolina Yacht Club (resigned membership, 1991)

47. For almost ten years he has devoted his life to seeking justice. He has walked thousands of victims and witnesses through what can be a terrifying judicial system, educating most of them along the way, showing them that our system does work and proving to them that it is the best system of justice in the world.

48. Five (5) letters of recommendation:
(a) William R. Cathcart, Vice President
South Carolina National Bank
P. O. Box 700, Charleston, SC 29402
577-8237
(b) Lionel S. Lofton, Esquire
P. O. Box 449, Charleston, SC 29402
722-6319
(c) David P. Schwacke, Solicitor
Ninth Judicial Circuit
P. O. Box 70100, North Charleston, SC 29415-0100
740-5850
(d) Glenn P. Churchill, Esquire
1-D Chalmers Street, Charleston, SC 29401
577-7015
(e) Jay D. Fowler, Assistant Rector
St. Philip's Church
142 Church Street, Charleston, SC 29401
722-7734

The Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline reports that no Formal Complaints have ever been filed against you.

The records of the applicable law enforcement agencies: Charleston County Sheriff's Office, a negative; Charleston City Police Department, a negative; SLED and FBI records are negative.

With that, I'm going to ask Mr. Couick if he has some questions and would you please answer those, sir.
MR. SINCLAIRE: I would. Would I be able -- be given an opportunity to give a brief statement before we start? I was told by Ms. Satterwhite that I could.
THE CHAIRMAN: Yes, sir. I have no objection. Any member have any objection? Go ahead, sir.
MR. SINCLAIRE: Ten years ago I was sworn in as an Assistant Solicitor. From that day forward, it has been my solemn obligation to seek justice. I have never taken that responsibility lightly. I've always tried to be fair and impartial, color-blind and committed to the fierce pursuit of the intangible we call justice.

Every citizen, in fact, every human being ever confronted with the questions what is justice responds in a different way. But in every answer, the central theme is the same. Justice is doing what is right, doing what is fair, doing what is honorable every time.

In South Carolina, judges are elected by the General Assembly and I believe judges are especially commissioned to do justice, to love kindness and to walk humbly with God.
THE CHAIRMAN: Sir. Mr. Couick?
MR. SINCLAIRE - EXAMINATION BY MR. COUICK:
Q. Good morning. If you can't hear me or if you need anything, let me know.
A. Thank you.
Q. Mr. Sinclaire, briefly describe to the Committee your experiences as an attorney since graduation.
A. I graduated from law school in 1984. I went straight to the Solicitor's office in Charleston County. There, I was given what we the call the normal gamut of cases that first year graduates from law school handle, the driving under the influence cases and driving under suspension.

At that time, I was also given additional responsibility to be in charge of magistrates and appeals. Any cases that were heard in Magistrate's court or appealed to the Circuit Court judge would be assigned to the Assistant Solicitor with that responsibility and I would handle all Magistrate's appeals from convictions from Magistrate's court.

I was also assigned the responsibility of handling bond estreatments. You'll notice on my PDQ, it talks about my one percent in civil court.

Estreatments are a function of the Solicitor's office whereby we take surety bondsman to task when their people that they have gotten out of jail. We hold them financially responsible, so I've been handling bond estreatments since then.

In 1986, I graduated from the Career Prosecutor course, the National College of District Attorneys and I was at that point appointed the Career Criminal Prosecutor in the Solicitor's Office. It would be my responsibility to target those people then identified as career criminals. There is a belief with empirical data to support it that there is a ten-percent of the criminal population that commits up to 50 percent of the crimes. At least what they teach you at the National College of District Attorneys, if you can target that ten percent then you have greatly reduced the amount of crime in the community.

Since that time, I was also asked to head up a task force for the prosecution of obscenity. Our office worked on a community complaint basis where someone from the community complains about possible distribution of obscene materials. It was asked that I head a circuit wide, which is Charleston and Berkeley Counties, task force, identify what the problem was and then prosecute that. I did that in 1988.

Since that time -- those, of course, are just additional responsibilities to the normal ones that I think you would understand comes with the prosecution in the Solicitor's Office. I currently am the Senior Prosecuting Attorney in charge of the preparation, investigation and prosecution of major felony offenders and violent criminals.
Q. Mr. Sinclaire, you on your PDQ note that you've been in -- that you've worked in the Solicitor's Office since graduation. The questionnaires that came into the committee, the responses were overwhelmingly positive about your work as a Solicitor.

They usually were glowing and there was always a "but" about three-quarters of the way in the sentence. And then the "but," what followed it differed sometimes, but usually it went along these lines: Is he too serious to be a judge? Does he have a sense of humor? Does he perceive a difference between the role of a judge and role of the solicitor? Would he be able to be fair to criminal defendants? Would he be able to put his job as Solicitor behind him?

Those are just some of them and there wasn't anybody that said Mr. Sinclaire is not qualified or I know the answer to this and I say he's not going to be able to do this. There was a "but" that left that question open

Aside from the issue of the limited nature of your civil practice, how would you answer that general concern of making the transition from being a tough, hard solicitor, which I think probably by your own admission that you've been that, to being a judge who has to take into account all viewpoints before him?
A. When I graduated from law school, I was 23 years old and I started in the Solicitor's Office. I was convinced that I could eliminate crime in Charleston County. I worked hard to do that. I have learned through the experience of being in court as much as I have been. The value of the Rules of Evidence and what they're designed to do and who they're designed to protect.

My job as a solicitor, although I like to think that I have been a hard-nosed solicitor, someone who is taking his job very seriously. My job as a solicitor has been to seek justice and justice doesn't mean getting a file in your office. If someone's charged with a forgery and trying to seek seven years incarceration -- that's the maximum penalty for forgery would be -- my job every day has not been maximum incarceration. My job is to seek justice.

A lot of people -- I mean you can tell them that, that sounds pretty hokey, but it -- I don't think it's hokey a bit. In a case like a forgery, that's a first offender of a nonviolent crime, what we want to do is we want to set him straight. We want -- we don't want him to go to the prison population. We don't want him to mingle with people that might cause him to go back out and commit another crime.

The Legislature has enacted Pretrial Intervention. It's for first offenders of nonviolent crimes. To my mind, he's automatically a candidate for that. What you do as a solicitor in your pursuit of justice is you ask the victims and the witness -- and you talk to the witnesses with the -- number one, the victims will say what's fair in your mind, what's just in your mind? And then you temper that with your own feeling, your own beliefs and that's what you seek. You don't seek maximum incarceration.

Now, there are heinous crimes committed in Charleston County particularly every day. It's one of the top three busiest circuits in the state. And there are crimes that I feel would warrant maximum incarceration. I listed a couple of them on my PDQ. I would just be fair.
Q. Tell me a little bit more about -- tell me a little bit about how you would make up for your lack of civil.
A. I think when you talk about civil experience, really you're talking about the Civil Rules of Procedures. The cases that I've been able to look

Civil court judges shouldn't bring with them a predisposition for a plaintiff's attorney or a big time defense firm. They should rule on the evidence before them. I would know the law of the cases before me. If it wasn't through pretrial briefs submitted by the attorney before me, it would be on my own, so that I would have a working knowledge of the issues in front of me and just take to the bench that which I think I've gleaned from ten years of practicing in Circuit Court and that's thinking on your feet, watching how Circuit judges rule from the bench and then rule on the evidence in front of me. That's what I'd do.
Q. You mentioned awhile ago that you would seek to do justice as a Circuit judge and admittedly it's hard to predict the type of cases that would come before you. If you were sitting in a criminal court, but while a judge cannot preordain how he would handle sentences, what would be your philosophy in sentencing? What would you try to accomplish?
A. I really would try to carry I think the sense of fairness that I've developed in the Solicitor's Office to the bench. You know, I heard you ask a couple of the other candidates earlier what about negotiated plea, what about a, you know, pattern that might disturb you as to whether you could or couldn't. The South Carolina Supreme Court has recognized different forms of pleas.

If you've got a negotiated plea, well, a negotiated plea binds the hands of the judge if he accepts the negotiations. Then there is recommendations from the Solicitor's Office as to what the maximum sentence should be. There has been sort of a slipping away from that. I don't think our focus -- or maybe an understanding because of the youth of the attorneys in practice before the judges, they sort of intermingle the two.

A recommendation from the Solicitor is just that and the defendant is told now you know in advance that as a judge, I'm not bound by any recommendations. And he has to say yes or no to that. He understands that I may go above or below the recommendations and he accepts that. Negotiated pleas, that's where you bind the hands of the judge. A negotiated plea is to the charge.

If it's a criminal sexual conduct, first degree, you may be pleading down to CSC, second, assault and battery high in aggravated nature. A negotiated plea is to charge and to sentence. So you could actually say we have decided -- the State and the Defense have decided the appropriate sentence is and if I go along with it and if I believe that it's fair and just

When a Solicitor comes in and makes a recommendation, it may be because he's got problems with his case or because the victim has asked him to as well as the defendant's attorney, so I would say that very few times without knowing the exact facts before me would I vary from the recommendations. I just stated, you have to hear the facts and the evidence.

If it's a negotiated plea and I couldn't live with it, just thought it was a slap in the face of justice, then I would just tell the attorneys, hey, I can't take that plea, but there are other judges that might come behind me.
Q. Would it ever be appropriate to criticize that public -- solicitor or his approach?
A. Mr. Couick, you probably know as well as anybody, the citizens of this State, I certainly see it on a daily basis, they -- the attorneys, the judiciary -- we get the worst rap I think than any other profession in the world. And I firmly believe in the Canons of the Ethics Committee, Code of Judicial Conduct that you should never publicly criticize the litigants and the judges for their decisions.

Now I've heard it said before, and I'm glad, you just need to take them aside and you just talk to them, say, hey, is there a problem? What's the situation? I think that when you put on the robe especially that you owe the South Carolina Bar and the judiciary across this nation a responsibility far above what an attorney would -- how he would act on his own publicly or privately and certainly better than just another --
Q. How does pressure work with you? The pressure of a job whether it be solicitor, judge and deadlines and time frames and what kind of impact does that have on you?
A. Well, I think that the pressure that we have had in the Solicitor's Office has been a real, real testing ground for us. You know, one of the judges I admired the most was John Hamilton Smith and John Hamilton Smith moved his cases in an efficient and fair manner with just an encyclopedic knowledge of the law. And there are many the scar on the backs of me and the other assistant solicitors that were up here before him, who weren't prepared, who couldn't handle their case load and we would be ready.

I hear -- I sense there is some friction between those two statements. If you're going to be like John Hamilton Smith, you need an encyclopedic knowledge of the law. Can you tell me where I'm missing the boat here?
A. I don't think you're missing the boat other than the fact that that was just one of the things that I admired about him. I think it's a tremendous asset to carry forward to your service to the bench. I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge today of civil law.

We get advance sheets with all the case law handed down by the South Carolina Supreme Court distributed through our office as they come down. But I -- as you're aware, I don't have the working knowledge of those cases right now. I know where to get the law. I know how to find out what it is. I would carry as much knowledge as I possibly could muster into every case that was before me.
Q. What measure of compassion do you owe a litigant rather than an attorney that comes into your courtroom --
A. I'm sorry?
Q. -- or person -- what measure of compassion and understanding do you owe a litigant or any other layperson who comes as a witness into your courtroom?
A. Judge Richard Field -- I mean he's been mentioned twice before. He had the most uncanny ability. He was the epitome of a perfect gentleman on the bench. He didn't care who you were or where you came from. If you came into his courtroom or you came into his chambers, he would treat you just as he would like to be treated. Not as a judge, but just as a human being. And that's the sort of compassion that I would aspire to take with me to the bench.

My job as a solicitor, you know, the victims and the witnesses and they are petrified of what goes on in a courtroom. They haven't seen it except for what is on television. They are afraid. That that's almost uniform.

Every case I get has different witnesses and different victims and different crimes that have been committed and in every case it's a real education process to the victims and the witnesses about how the system

I like everybody to like me just like everybody else does. In that sense, you just go out of your way to explain to them until they're comfortable how it works and why.
Q. I assume since this is your first run for the position that if you were elected, you'd serve for the full term?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. I also take it that you mention on your form, you have no Martindale-Hubbell rating. You're not sure why you don't have one, but you don't have one?
A. I've since found out why I didn't have a rating. You have to request one.
Q. Ex parte communication, in that -- it's a little bit different, I take it, from my understanding in the civil practice as it is in the criminal practice because you just have different types of courtrooms being run, but how do you handle it now? What do you do to ensure the rights of that defendant in ex parte communication and how would you handle ex parte communication both in criminal and civil matters if you were a judge?
A. The way I handle it now is I just don't go talk to the judges unless the attorney that's handling the case with me is in there. It's not until you've seen it happen and you see the way -- I mean it just goes back to that fear thing. People don't know what they're not privy to and they're afraid of that.

If an attorney sees another attorney that they're handling a case with coming out of the judge's chambers and hearing them, you know, laughing and having a good time and out comes this attorney and he's got the next case up, you know, they -- that attorney has no idea what's just gone on.

Has any sort of information about the case been submitted? I mean it's a dangerous thing and I think the emphasis that you put on it is why, not necessarily because it's a dangerous thing because you don't know the story until you know both sides of the story I think and you don't want to hear one side of the story first and start forming an opinion about it. So it's a dangerous thing that can happen not only because of those elements, but because -- it's dangerous because the other attorney doesn't know what happened and that's not fair.

So the way we handle it now at least when I handle it and I'm pretty sure the other attorneys in my office handle it, because they're -- they just don't. They find the attorney that -- public affairs office, but there is that

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