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And although I have legal abilities and I have intellectual capacities, I add to that the human capacity and never forgetting that this is indeed a real controversy. It's not nearly an intellectual endeavor and that these indeed are real people that have -- that expect to be treated as real people and expect to be fairly treated not only in the repertoire in the courtroom, but in the final decision of the court.

So I think that my strongest characteristics would be that I recognize that I have an obligation to be ultimately fair with -- beginning with the litigants and with the lawyers and, obviously, courtesy and caring and concern grow out of that, but I think the court system owes it to all parties an obligation of fairness.
Q. And do you have a weaker -- is there a weaker side --
A. Oh, but, of course.
Q. Because we're all human.
A. Because I have a -- indeed, we are. I have -- and I've worked on this because this was a real problem for me. I have been able in my professional career to quickly analyze a factual situation and to determine the issues involved in it and to see which way in -- without prejudice to a party and in fairness to a party, which way to ought to go and when it doesn't go that way as quickly as I think it ought to, then my patience will wear thin. Now, I've worked on that and it's been a battle.

Galatians reports a listing of the fruits of the spirit. Patience is about the third one, I think, leading with love being the first, but, yes, I'm weak in patience. I confess to it, plead guilty to it. I'm working on it, though.
Q. Well, do you have any advice for us who also need a little more patience?
A. Yes.
Q. How do you work on it?
A. Yes, I can. Do you want it now or do you want it later.

So I have chewed grievously on my tongue, but I have learned to let the lawyers bring the case unless it became so dilatory that I found it necessary to call a recess and adjourn to a more secluded environment for a conference.
Q. Are these practices of yours the same whether you're in General Sessions court or in Circuit Court?
A. Yes, ma'am.
Q. Court of Common Pleas?
A. Yes, ma'am. I think so.
Q. If you attain the position of a Supreme Court justice, what would be your advice to your successor on the Circuit Court bench?
A. To prepare. To prepare. To prepare. To study the law. To know evidence. To prepare. I think that we cannot be well enough prepared in the basics of evidence and of substantive law and of procedural law. And we have an obligation to know that for the benefit of the litigants whom we are there to serve. Just as the members of the House and Senate are here to serve the people of this State, we are a service industry also. We -- my advice would be prepare.
Q. Mention has been made here that you are competent and enjoy using computers. Could you explain that a little bit --
A. I will.
Q. -- for the committee, please?
A. I think all of us who have been involved in the legal business for sometime are aware that judges carry multitudes of notebooks, or bags of notebooks, for civil and/or criminal terms of court and, indeed, I did also until probably three and a half, maybe almost four years ago. I just simply decided that there was a better way to do it, so in my ignorance of automation, I went to a computer store and just bought a computer and bought Word Perfect, a version of it they had at that time, and went home and would spend nights, hour after hour learning how to operate that computer.

I also put in points of law that I select from the Advance Sheets of our State Supreme Court or from the United States Supreme Court that I think are important and I maintain directories in Evidence, General Sessions, Common Pleas, Workers' Compensation and I put all of that into a particular directory with a file name that I have selected so that I can find it. It's not a program I was able to buy. I use Word Perfect 6.0 and, of course, you're familiar with that, but I have created my own file system within selected directories with my own file name.

In the office, I have three freestanding computers networked, my secretary's being the base. The County, Spartanburg County, bought those for me and I maintain everything on those. I do all my correspondence off the computer and my secretary and I just took a Word Perfect course two and a half years ago when the County bought the computers for me, so that we would have some knowledge of what we were doing and we both continue to learn.

In addition to that, I have with the cooperation of the Spartanburg County Bar Association purchased a computer for the Clerk of Court's office where the Bar actually generated the money about $3500, I think it cost maybe $10 a piece or something like that and we have the Master Trial Roster, the Common Pleas Trial Roster, the Term of Court Trial Roster, a what we call a "hot list," the top five or six cases for a particular term of court.

We have Bar notices, administrative orders and we have E-mail all in a bulletin board concept. The E-mail has proven so beneficial in lawyers communicating with each other. It's proven beneficial in lawyers communicating in to me. For instance, a lawyer who might be in a deposition, an evidence problem arises and as so often happens, they're able to go to a computer, call my court coordinator, go into the E-mail, leave a message for me, and my secretary constantly checks that to see what's coming in. She'll bring the note to me that Lawyer Jones is having a problem with the admissibility of a hospital report, peer review problem, can you give them a ruling on it, and I can either write it on there and have her type it back to him or I can take a recess and come back to my computer and do it or, as I now have set up in Spartanburg and in

I think that in a nutshell, Ms. McNamee, is what I have done in computerization. There is still a lot of things we can do, but that's what I have done with the cooperation of my county council and the cooperation of the Spartanburg County Bar Association. Other judges in the state -- I provided to Judge Howard in Charleston, he had wanted to see how my bulletin board concept worked and I provided that to him. I think it's a good idea and it's been beneficial, I think, to the lawyers at home.
Q. Do you serve on any committees for the Bar or for the Supreme Court on law and technology or technology and the law, computer application?
A. I have been appointed to a committee. Judge Ervin from Anderson chairs a committee dealing with automation and the needs of the court system. But because of the financial constraints of the state, the committee has been fairly dormant and I think the work that has been done -- ya'll have been able to give some money, but we are in a financial crises and it hasn't been all that we would like to have, but the efforts that I have seen generated have come from monies from counties. And I'll get a call from a judge who says, "I have gotten some money from my county. Tell me what you have and how -- what your experience has been with that," and, of course, I share that with them, just as when new judges come on the bench and they want a copy of my boiler plate charges or whatever is in my notebook, I can make a disk for them and send them my whole Common Pleas and General Sessions notebook on a couple of disks.
Q. It would appear that just as you could use a conference call, you might be able to use E-mail for your committee meetings.
A. Oh, you can, and we have. And we have. Well, meetings between lawyers, not committee meetings, but you're right. A lot of possibilities in automation that we continue to see. And the ABA has been most innovative in presenting ideas to us principally from an article a year or so ago from a lawyer out in the Midwest where the towns were far apart, and in one place, he couldn't really make enough money to pay his overhead, so by the use of automation he was able to spread his business over about a 600-mile area. And by computers and an airplane, he was able to do much more work and serve many more people, so automation is an enormous resource that we have and as money comes available, we just appreciate very much what the legislature has done to help us.

As chief judges for administrative purposes, most of us, and there are obviously lot of us, civil and criminal statewide, we have administrative discussions with individual lawyers. I don't think any of us as a group view those as any violation of the ex parte prohibition. The prohibition extends to substantive discussions with one lawyer or one part of the case about that case and not to the administrative matters that we have to deal with tangential to the substantive disposition of the case, so I -- substantive discussion just cannot be done. It's unfair, and as Judge Bell said, it's simply against the rules.
Q. Is there any record, written record, kept of the E-mail about the decision on an administrative matter or procedural matter?
A. You know, I know that we have a printer in the court coordinator's office where the bulletin board is maintained, but whether it records -- my guess is no. If I write you, you can make a copy of it on your computer in your office, but there is no central place that can copy that because the court coordinator cannot get into your mailbox, so, no, unless it comes into the court coordinator.

If the question comes into her, everything coming into her is printed instantly as it comes in, so we have a running record of that. But to a mailbox, no.
Q. Judge Burnett, we've looked at the 30, the 60 and the 90-day report which is provided by court administration over the past year and a half and there was some months in that year when you showed no outstanding cases and others where there were three or four cases. Can you explain that? What kind of matters do you take under advisement?
A. The only time that I would have anything under advisement would arise from nonjury. The things I take under advisement might be Workers' Compensation appeals where
-- or Employment Security Appeals where I've got to study the record and bring into play the argument presented by the attorneys.

From time to time in a Magistrate's Court appeal, I might have to do an order in that, just so that I don't have a riot in the courtroom, but I think those are the times that I might have some apparent backlog of three

My experience -- of course, my office has been next door to Bruce Littlejohn for my entire judicial career and I've had many occasions to talk with him and I know that many discussions are ongoing in the appellate process, so I know that I have input into whatever the majority opinion might say.

So unless I have some unique point that I might wish to make as an aid to the Bar or unless I would dissent, I would not do a concurring opinion just so that I would have my name specially in the book. I have no pride in notoriety whatsoever.

I think as all politicians, it took me awhile to get over that, but I think I have done that. In the one time that I sat with the Court of Appeals, I had -- I have written two opinions and I have dissented in one opinion and as grievous as it was, I disagreed with my dear friend Justice Littlejohn and Judge Bell, but they're probably all right.
Q. They got over it. I note that you have lectured to local associations on the Rules of Civil Procedure. Have you done any other more -- any other formal lecturing or writing or contributions to CLE's?
A. Not recently. I have not done such an activity. I have scheduled for June -- well, we just moved it. It was May the 17th, an update of the Rules to the legal secretaries of Spartanburg and, of course, the lawyers come to that also. And it's been approved for CLE credit. But I have that upcoming, but, generally, I have not done that.

I have worked in presenting the position of the Bar and the bench by way of civic clubs, speeches and such as that, but CLE involvement, I have not allocated time to do that.
Q. What is your opinion of alternative dispute resolution and has the Seventh Circuit been involved in this?
A. The Seventh Circuit has been. I think that ADR is a concept whose time is long overdue. We just recently finished our first Mediation Week.

This was given in Greenville in conjunction with the Anderson County Bar and presided over mediation hearings in Spartanburg resulting in a settlement of 60 percent of the cases we scheduled. We find it phenomenal. Two things in my mind grow out of that. One is that I intend to do a mediation, a full mediation week at least once a quarter. And secondly, it is my request, and I've made this to court administration, that they take a term of court when the mediation concept is in place statewide, that they take a term of court and designate it as a mediation week and let that be all that we do that week.

The results from that are the movement of many, many more cases than we ordinarily can do in a Common Pleas term of court, but ADR is an avenue that we are beginning to use more and more and I think has a dramatic position in the justice system, not only in the trial level, but I can certainly see its application in the appellate level.
Q. Judge, you were questioned in November concerning ex parte communications, tests for recusal, your approach to the acceptance of gifts versus your ideas on ordinary social hospitality?
A. Right.
Q. Are the answers that you provided us at that time the same as you would provide us today? Has anything happened to change your opinion on those questions?
A. Nothing has happened. I think it -- we have come to the point or to the realization that it is simply improper to take gifts from lawyers who appear before you. It is not wrong to enjoy ordinary social hospitality, a barbecue at a friend's house who might be a lawyer and, of course, those of us who are lawyers, most of our friends are lawyers and those of us who become judges, most of our friends are still lawyers.

And so I have -- I see no wrongdoing whatsoever in having ordinary social hospitality at lunch or dinner with a lawyer. I would avoid it when the lawyer had a matter then pending before me where the appearance of impropriety might be evident.
Q. As far as the matter which you discussed with the committee last November concerning your name being listed in an ad endorsing certain

(Off the record)
THE CHAIRMAN: Judge Pleicones, would you please --
COSTA M. PLEICONES, having been duly sworn, testified as follows:
THE CHAIRMAN: All right, Judge, your last screening was March 30, 1994 for a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Have you had a chance to review your Personal Data Summary?
JUDGE PLEICONES: Yes, sir, I have.
THE CHAIRMAN: And is it -- any corrections need to be made?
JUDGE PLEICONES: No, sir.
THE CHAIRMAN: Let me just say at this time that unless there is an objection on your part, our plan would be to incorporate the questions and responses from the last screening that we had on March 29 into the record.
JUDGE PLEICONES: None whatsoever.
THE CHAIRMAN: Do you have any objection to our making the Summary that we have of your current -- the summary that you provided for this election a part of the record?
JUDGE PLEICONES: Not at all.
THE CHAIRMAN: That will be done at this time.

1. Costa M. Pleicones
Home Address: Business Address:
525 Congaree Avenue P. O. Box 192
Columbia, SC 29205 Columbia, SC 29202

2. He was born in Greenville, South Carolina on February 29, 1944. He is presently 50 years old.

4. He was married to Dona Singletary on August 14, 1965. He has two children: Sara Venetia Pleicones Norrell, age 24 (homemaker), and Laura Suzanne, age 21 (senior at the University of Georgia).

6. He attended Wofford College, 1961-1965 (actually completed all courses in December, 1964, and returned for commencement exercises in June, 1965), AB, English; and the University of South Carolina School of Law, 1965- 1968, J.D.

8. Legal/Judicial education during the past five years:
The courses varied widely, from civil to criminal and from substantive to procedural. He believes that he always exceeded requirements. Since becoming a judge, he has attended all MCLE except for October, 1993. He was excused from this course so that he could attend a National Judicial College (NJC) course called "Children in Court." This dealt with the child as victim/witness. He attended the NJC General Jurisdiction course in 1992.

9. Taught or Lectured:
"Bridge the Gap" for a number of years, through to the present. He recently lectured at the State Bar meeting (1993) on ex parte communications. He taught legal segment for "Leadership Columbia" (1992). He frequently presides over Moot Court competitions as well as speaks at civil organization meetings, including National Verbatim Court Reporters Conference (1993).

10. Published Books and Articles:
None since college, when he wrote for the literary magazine.

12. Legal experience since graduation from law school:
September, 1965 - May, 1968 Student, University of South Carolina Law School
Law Clerk for Herbert, Dial and Windham (Columbia, South Carolina)
Law Clerk for Lawyers Abstract Company (Columbia, South Carolina)

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