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The applicable law enforcement agencies, Richland County Sheriff's, Columbia City Police, SLED and FBI, are all negative. The Judgement Rolls of Richland County are negative. Federal Court showed no records or criminal actions involving you. There was one civil action in which you are a plaintiff. It was filed by you and others against the US Department of Treasury, and the case was closed by Consent Order in 1989. Does that sound correct?
JUDGE PLEICONES: That's correct. That was a matter in which the IRS claimed a lien on our client's funds and we brought an action to ask the Court to determine who should be entitled to the funds.
THE CHAIRMAN: We have no complaints or statements that have been received against you and no witnesses are present to testify against you. Prior to turning you over to Mr. Elliott for questioning, we are offering all candidates the opportunity, if they wish, to either make an oral statement for the record or, if they wish, they can submit a written statement to be included in the Journal.
JUDGE PLEICONES: Thank you. I have no -- I'm just happy to be here.
THE CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. Mr. Elliott.
MR. ELLIOTT: Thank you.
JUDGE PLEICONES- EXAMINATION BY MR. ELLIOTT:
Q. Good morning.
A. Good morning.
Q. If I don't speak loudly enough, please let me know and I'll --
A. Sure.
Q. -- try to do better. You've been on the Circuit Court bench for about two and a half years now, and there are some who might have the perception that you need a little more seasoning before moving on to the highest appeals court in the State. How would you respond to the people who have those perceptions?
A. Well, I'm a quick study. I frankly think I need no further seasoning. I have, and I'm happy to say, been asked on seven occasions to serve as an Acting Associate Justice on the South Carolina Supreme Court, in not minor cases. A death penalty case among others, and I feel that I have the necessary experience to serve as an appellate judge.

I have an extensive career as a practitioner and, as you can see, I have an extensive amount of appellate experience as well.

I typically, as with most judges, do not write my own orders, but what I will do and -- is to submit a jointly addressed letter to both parties. Sometimes these letters go on for three and four pages telling them exactly what I want contained in the order by the person who is to write it, and they're very detailed and I take the instructions and compare it to the written, final written product and quite frequently make changes.

Just make sure that everything is hit and everything is appropriately supported by a correct citation of authority. I do check them.
Q. You do check the cite?
A. I do.
Q. If you're elected to the Supreme Court, what is going to be your test for when you feel you -- it's appropriate to write a dissent?
A. When I disagree with the majority.
Q. How --
A. And I don't mean to be flippant.
Q. Well, how strongly will your feelings have to be?
A. Well, the law is not necessarily a black and white thing, and I can be persuaded that there -- to agree with perhaps a shade of gray, assuming that it is not a matter that is of momentous import. But if I feel that the

I think that I have something to contribute in terms of my scholarship and I just think that -- I really don't know how to respond other than that.
Q. What is it about the job that appeals to you?
A. About the job that appeals to me, other than the visceral things, the prestige and the --
Q. Yes, sir.
A. An opportunity for service. I think that everybody who's in here, in this room, that has held public office or who seeks judicial office or further political office has a desire for public service in his or her life. I share that.

I was a practitioner of the law for 23 years and was moderately successful at that both economically and professionally. I yearn for something other than going to my office at 6:00 a.m. and leaving my office at 8:00 p.m. I could do that. I think that I have a lot to contribute and I think that the desire for public service that I have and that I would like to continue in a role such as that. Public service.
Q. All right.
A. And an ability to contribute. I think that I would represent our State well.
Q. If you're elected to the Supreme Court, what would be your practice about preparing for oral argument? Would you read -- particularly when the case is not preassigned to you, do you read the transcripts, the briefs,

Depending upon the complexity of the case, I would tend to think that I would -- there would be cases in which I would read everything. In each case I would not do that, but in each case, certainly, the bench memorandum that had been prepared, obviously the briefs, you would have to read the briefs of the parties. I think you owe that to the parties.

I don't think that -- I do that now when people have oral arguments before me on nonjury matters. The worst thing in the world for a lawyer is to know that his presentation has not been previously read by the fact finder. And so I do have that practice now and I would continue that practice, although I can't represent to this Body that I would read every page of every transcript.
Q. You sort of alluded to what your schedule might be like now and -- for court. What's a typical week for you?
A. Typical week.
Q. Work week.
A. Hours-wise, I get up at 5:15, I go to the Y. I get -- and run. I get to my office about 7:30, quarter of 8:00, and I usually leave about the normal time that anybody leaves, 6:00 o'clock, 6:15. The -- and it goes through
-- I usually stay until 5:00 on Friday and -- even when there's nothing to do, because unfortunately I have this bad habit of answering the phone at 4:00 o'clock on Friday afternoon and it's somebody who needs a TRO.

That's what you get paid to do, so -- and I go in at least one day on each weekend, because I'm a little -- I take on a lot of things. And when you take on a lot of things you have a lot of things that are backlogged.
Q. Well, that sort of leads me to the next question. One of the things that we did is, we've checked, I guess they call it the 30-day report or the report of matters that judges have pending over 30 days. And it doesn't necessarily mean anything, but you did have some matters
-- and the period of time we checked was 1992, '93 and January of '94, and you did have some matters that carried over. If you -- and like I say,

I can tell you that last year, for instance, I spent almost six weeks on one case - three weeks in the trial and about three weeks in the motions. That was an extremely complex products liability case. That case, for instance, is still going on because there are post-trial motions. The briefs, the transcripts, the motions in that case fill 72 of the notebooks that you have in front of you there, that size notebook.

I -- when it's something that's that complex, I tend to read it. I tend to be perhaps obsessive-compulsive about reading everything when somebody presents it, and I would think that my 30-day reports would not reflect more than about two or three such matters because --
Q. No, sir, never more than two.
A. Yes. And -- but I think that that probably will always be the case with me because if you've got something that's important, you may put it on the back burner for a while until you get an opportunity to have a lengthy period of time to address it. And it's -- you know, I just -- being thorough, I think.
Q. I'm not sure exactly how you put it a little while ago, but you said something about work seems to find you or matters seem to follow you around --
A. I take things on.
Q. You take things on, that's --
A. Yes. Lawyers come to you. You get paid by the State to be a Circuit Judge. That's what I get paid to do. I think that when I get paid by the State to be a Circuit Judge, if lawyers come to me, and this is not atypical of the Fifth Judicial Circuit Judge, and perhaps it's more common in the larger circuits, you'll have eight to ten minor settlements a week. Those are nothing things, they're no-brainers, in effect.

However, that begins your day, you start at 8:30, doing that because that's the time that the people get in the courthouse. People will seek you out because they know you will take on, for instance, a temporary restraining order at 5:00 o'clock in the afternoon on Friday, or Saturday, you'll go in and do that.

I make myself available. When you make yourself available, people take advantage of your availability and thus, you tend to do as much work as these people have for you. So that's what it is, I just make myself available and people find me.

I allow -- I get my secretary and law clerk, even though you cannot insulate yourself from ex parte communications by using staff, I generally require people to schedule matters through them for the simple reason that people are not as tempted to pour out their hearts and tell a law clerk or a secretary about their case as they are a judge, and it's usually preceded by something like, "I'm not trying to ex parte you or anything like that," which is, of course, you know, what they're trying to do and it may or may not be innocuous.

I try not to be offensive with people. I try to tell people, look, don't talk to me about the case. If somebody persists, and nobody has, I think that I would have to take the appropriate action, which would be to report it to the Board of Commissioners.

Now, what I do to avoid ex parte communications -- and I've been sensitive to this since the moment that I became a judge because I didn't like the practice of judges communicating with one lawyer relative to the preparation of an order. As I told you earlier, if I have a case that needs, that requires an order after some period of some advisement by me, I would jointly address a letter to the lawyers for each litigant telling which

Recently our Supreme Court has approved minor refinements or tuning, tune-ups on orders that you've told one party to do. But I don't even do that. I just think it's better to send in the order, and I always put a caveat in the end, so that they don't tell their clients about it, that as always, I reserve the right to make any changes in the order, to include a change in the result. And if you tell them that you're going -- you reserve the right to make a change in the result, the prudent lawyer does not tell his or her client that we've won, we're just waiting for the order to come back.

I try to disarm people more with humor than anything else, than with being overbearing. If somebody comes in, I say, "Look, you know, don't ex parte me about the case." And if they were inclined to do that, they don't do it. If I see one lawyer walking in and I know that, for instance, he got here at 9:30 and the other lawyers, they were supposed to be here at a quarter of 10, to pre-try a case, I just say, you know, wait for the ---you know, so and so to come, and when he gets here, just let me know.

I don't like ex parte communications. I never did and I tend to be perhaps a little more scrupulous about them than maybe even I should be, to the point of being a fault.
Q. It's been a while, but for several years you served in the Public Defender's office. When you hear criminal cases now, is there any tendency or any --
A. Am I a soft-hearted, bleeding heart liberal?
Q. Well, do you have any special sympathies for the criminal defense attorney?
A. I have special sympathies for anybody who's charged with a criminal offense in our state or in any criminal system. The sympathies would extend the -- the extension to them of the Constitutional rights and the procedural rights which they should be afforded.

But in terms of being sympathetic on a personal level, occasionally there will be a case, whether it's a civil case or a criminal case, where you'll be sympathetic to a victim, to an accused person, a plaintiff or a defendant, and you can't divorce yourself from human feelings.

But, you know -- I can't imagine a time that I've let sympathy for a defendant play a -- and I -- probably, stating this truthfully, I need to say a part in the decision, but a significant part in the decision. Certainly, you feel sorry for some people, you know.
Q. But it doesn't affect your objectivity?

We'll have 150 people in Richland County. I tell them that they'll be some light hearted moments during the course of the qualification, during the course of the voir dire, perhaps during the course of the trial, but once their function begins that the matter is deadly serious to the litigants, it's the most important thing they have.

I try to impress upon the jury the absolute importance of according dignity and respect to all of the litigants, while at the same time, people who come in to court, jurors, litigants, witness, are for the most part intimidated. It's the first time they've been there and they're overwhelmed sometimes, so I try to make them feel as at-home as possible while at the same time maintaining, I think, the decorum of the court. And I immodestly have to state that I think I do an excellent job of doing that.
Q. What tries your judicial temperament the most?
A. Well, I have a three-by-five index card that I put on the bench when I -- I don't know if the word is ascended to the bench, or when I was elected to the bench. I put it out there and it sits there today, and it says, "Remember where you came from."

By that, I try to remind myself that I was once a lawyer and that it's not easy being a lawyer. Being a lawyer is one of the hardest things that there is, particularly a lawyer who litigates frequently. I try not to let anything get to me.

I guess abject stupidity gets to me more than anything, on the part of a lawyer, because I get infuriated if a lawyer is not appropriately representing his or her client's interests through not a well considered strategic approach, but just you didn't read the book. You know, if they don't know what Rule 24 is or Rule 43, and I don't like lawyers who aren't prepared.

But I guess dumb mistakes. And I don't mean mistakes of inexperience, because you get young lawyers in all the time. Mistakes of inexperience could be strategic judgements. I'm talking about the person that didn't read the book.
Q. On your Personal Data Questionnaire, you reported having an interest in a Hampton Office --
A. I do.
Q. Hampton Street office building and, as I understood it, that was an office building with your former law firm.
A. Uh-huh.
Q. It also indicated that apparently you must have made an attempt to divest your interest in that and there were serious financial consequences if you had done so.
A. Right.
Q. And what do you do when those attorneys appear before you now, the ones that you have in that partnership with you?
A. As you know, the ethical considerations require you to divest yourself of a business interest that may create a potential conflict as soon as practicable and without economical adversity to any party. That particular office building is going to be perhaps forever an economic adversity to divest myself of that interest.

And, as you also noticed on the Personal Data Questionnaire, I have just determined that I will permanently recuse myself from anything involving my old law firm. I don't -- they don't appear before me. Anything that they are involved in -- even if I get rid of the building that I own with them, I'm not going to hear any of their cases, and I'll tell you why. It's simply because I could not -- having practiced law with these people for as long as I did and having the kind of relationship that I had with them, there's no question in my mind that I would be biased in their favor, and I simply won't do it.

It does not create a problem in, thankfully, in Richland County owing to the fact that we have five judges within the Circuit and so although my law firm, my old law firm is all over the docket, they're fairly easy to duck. So that's what I do, I just don't hear their cases.
Q. Just a point of clarification. Your Personal Data Questionnaire reported that you're receiving fees through, I think, 1993 --
A. I did through 1993.

You will note that of the four people holding law degrees who wrote letters of recommendation for me, one no longer practices law, is a university official, a college official; one has now become a federal judge and was pending that appointment at the time. The other is in Anderson and was a college classmate and fraternity brother of mine. I wanted somebody who had known me for a number of years, yet who had never practiced before me and who likely never will practice before me. That person does not do appellate work and it's very unlikely that he would ever appear before me as a trial lawyer.

The other person is a person likewise who was involved in the judicial selection process at the time that I became a municipal judge. He was on the city council and I felt that it would be beneficial for this committee to have the benefit of that background. That lawyer, to my knowledge, I cannot say for an absolute fact, has never appeared before me, but I don't remember if he ever has.

I know that one of his partners at one time appeared before me in a criminal case, but as I put on my note, the addendum, these people are not likely to appear before me simply because of the nature of their practice.
Q. In the area of pledges, have you sought the pledge of any legislator before this screening either directly or indirectly?

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