FAILURE TO PURSUE: SC Highway Patrol supervisor demoted for not pursuing DUI charge of public official

CLARENDON COUNTY, S.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) – King Cutter couldn’t go anywhere with 1,000-pounds of golf cart laying on his right leg. Luckily, though, his cellphone automatically dialed 911 and a Clarendon County Sheriff’s deputy was there to help within minutes.

Just past 1 a.m., Lewis King Cutter, the Clarendon County Assistant Public Defender, was trapped under his overturned golf cart with containers of beer laying on the ground at the corner of Bloomville Road and Mohawk Drive.

“Oh my God, dude, it’s f—ing killing me,” Cutter yelled at Clarendon County Sheriff’s Sergeant Lane Jones. The deputy tried to lift the cart, then went to his patrol car to search for something to help lift the half-ton cart off the public defender.

“Oh my God dude, just come over here and help me,” Cutter yelled as he squirmed on the ground, crying out in pain. Cutter kept pleading with the deputy to help as the deputy searched for something to lift the cart off his leg. “Please help me pick it up,” Cutter yelled.

“I’m trying, man, I’m trying. Shut up, okay? Just chill, I didn’t put you in this position,” the deputy chirped back as he manhandled the golf cart off the ground by hand, freeing the public official’s leg. Cutter said his leg wasn’t broken. The deputy started to examine Cutter when he noticed a puddle of blood on the ground.

The body camera exchange showed the deputy recognized Cutter, which isn’t a surprise in a county with a smidge more than 31,000 people. The small southern town where this happened, Manning, S.C., is even smaller with 3,800 people.

“King, we’re – hold on. You got a lot of blood down here from just; just hang tight. There’s more blood right there than what I’ve seen,” the sergeant told Cutter, “I’m good, I’m good,” Cutter responded. “You’re not good, man,” Jones told him.

The deputy noticed a gash in the top of the man’s head and suggested Cutter go to the hospital to get checked out. Jones told Cutter multiple times he should get medical help, but each time Cutter refused, asking to go home instead.

“But I can’t go to the hospital,” Cutter told the deputy at one point. “You need to go to the hospital,” the deputy countered.

In his first call from the scene, the sergeant concluded that Cutter had no business driving anything that night, “Hey, I’m going to fill you in real quick. We going to get a call about this. Showed up to a wreck on Bloomville Road. It’s King Cutter on a golf cart, flipped over. He was entrapped under the golf car, he’s 10-55 bad. But he’s already trying to tell us he’s just going to go home and all that stuff and wanted to get you a heads up (unintelligible)…he’s 10-55 real bad, he’s hurt, but he’s 10-55 real bad. Just a heads up,” Jones told an unidentified person on the phone.

10-55 in police code translates to “intoxicated driver.”

The deputy’s body camera recording shows Cutter claimed he wasn’t driving the golf cart, and he wasn’t alone when it crashed. However, no one else was on scene when the deputy showed up while Cutter cried out in pain. Cutter said his brother-in-law, John Rogers Mishoe, was with him.

Here’s the transcript of the deputy and Cutter’s conversation concerning Mishoe:

CUTTER: “Please, I can’t go to the hospital, I just can’t.”

DEPUTY: “10-4.”

CUTTER: “I mean, my house is just right over there. I came over here to get him.”

DEPUTY: “You came to get John Roger?”

CUTTER: “Please don’t send me to the hospital, please.”

DEPUTY: “Dude, that’s a decision they will make, you are hurt, I’m telling you that now, you are hurt. Is JR hurt? King, talk to me, okay? Is JR hurt?”

CUTTER: “Little bit.”

DEPUTY: “But he’s up and walking, right?”

CUTTER: “Yeah.”

DEPUTY: “So he’s conscious?”

CUTTER: “Yeah.”

The video shows King Cutter and the position he held in the county’s court system wasn’t unknown to Sgt. Jones. In a conversation with another deputy, Jones raised a concern that the sheriff’s office shouldn’t be running the investigation into Cutter’s crash or the suspicion of driving under the influence, “Can we even work this?” Jones asked another deputy.

“Highway Patrol is going to have to,” the unidentified deputy told the sergeant.

THE TROOPERS KNEW

Within 10 minutes of finding the county public defender trapped under a golf cart, Clarendon County Sheriff’s Sergeant Lane Jones recognized his agency should not be involved in the investigation. Jones pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed South Carolina Highway Patrol Trooper Will Baker.

Here’s a partial transcript of that phone call:

TROOPER: “Hey Sarge, you calling about that golf cart?”

DEPUTY: “Yeah, I want to give y’all a heads up on who it is.”

TROOPER: “Who is it?”

DEPUTY: “I don’t know who’s coming – King Cutter. He didn’t want to tell me where he was or anything like that – finagle his way, but anyway, I just got JR was with him out of it. He said JR was hurt, he said he was walking and talking, I don’t know, maybe King’s house.”

TROOPER: “Crap, all right hold on. (Trooper talking to SCHP Corporal Datrick Prince, his supervisor) Hey, that golf cart, that’s uh—hold on…I’m on the phone with the Sergeant from Clarendon.”

Baker’s audio ends there after he shuts the microphone off to his body camera as he finishes telling Corporal Prince about what – and who – is involved in the Clarendon County crash call. Jones’ body camera continues to record, capturing his side of the conversation.

Although you can hear Baker rustling with the body camera in search of the mute button, the SCDPS also confirmed to QCN that Baker did mute his body camera microphone. The SC Department of Public Safety would not release a copy of the trooper’s body camera recording to Queen City News.

In 2015, SC legislators intentionally excluded body worn camera recordings from the SC Freedom of Information Act, allowing law enforcement agencies and government attorneys to keep those recordings from the public indefinitely.

And many do.

The BWC legislation – which was designed to require all SC law enforcers to wear a body camera – was introduced by the following SC Senators: Gerald Malloy (Darlington), Marlon Kimpson (Charleston), Kelvin Johnson (Clarendon), Clementa Pinckney (Jasper), Paul Thurmond (Charleston/Dorchester), Nikki Setzler (Lexington), Larry Grooms (Berkeley/Charleston), Joel Lourie (Richland), Thomas McElveen (Sumter), Karl Allen (Greenville), Katrina Shealy (Lexington), Creighton Coleman (Fairfield), Chip Campsen (Charleston), and John Scott (Richland).

First reading of the original bill, S.47, was held on Jan. 13, 2015 and included the recordings as part of the SCFOIA; meaning law enforcement must release recordings made “in a public place” whenever a citizen asked for a copy through the open records law. But on May 13, 2015, lawmakers inserted language into the bill, stripping the recordings from the SCFOIA, thereby giving law enforcement the option of keeping those recordings from the general public.

On June 4, 2015, SC House members voted 113-0 to pass the body worn camera law. When the bill was passed back to the senate the same day, senators voted 41-1 to approve the law. Sen. Lee Bright of Spartanburg was the legislature’s lone ‘no’ vote.

Former SC Governor Nikki Haley signed the bill into law on June 10, 2015.

Even though the law that governs the use of body cameras allows police chiefs, sheriffs, solicitors, the attorney general, and prosecutors across the state the full discretion to release those recordings.

Even though the SCDPS released Baker’s dash camera recoding, the agency would not release either troopers’ body camera recordings. Clarendon County Sheriff Tim Baxley did the opposite, releasing Sgt. Lane Jones’ body camera recording to QCN. Jones’ recording also captured his side of the remainder of his phone call with the troopers – the conversation Baker’s body camera did not record.

“Public defender,” Jones said to Baker into the phone while still listening in to Baker’s conversation with Prince.

The SC Department of Public Safety allows troopers and State Transport Police to turn their microphones off in certain cases. SCDPS Policy 300.06, Sec. V(C) allows troopers to “mute the audio portion of an in-car audio/video Recording Devices when communicating privately with a supervisor and/or the Office of General Counsel. Upon completion of the private conversation with a supervisor and/or OGC, the Recording Devices shall be unmuted,” the policy states.

The patrol did not explain what it believed was private about the conversation between Baker, Prince, and Jones that night, but found Baker’s muting of his body camera microphone to be in compliance with the policy. The department’s policy doesn’t detail what constitutes a private conversation between a trooper and supervisors and the OGC attorneys.

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The audio captured before and after Baker cut his microphone clearly shows the three were discussing who Cutter was and what he did for a living.

One thing is clear from the portions of the recordings that survived that night: the Highway Patrol knew who was involved in the crash and the position that man held in the justice system there.

At the time of the call, the troopers were conducting a roadblock in neighboring Sumter County. Corporal Prince was the one who responded to Clarendon County when the patrol wrapped up the roadblock that night.

Despite his continued pleas to leave the scene and go home, Sgt. Jones was not letting Cutter leave, unless it was in the back of an ambulance, “Did I break any law?” Cutter asked. “Well, you’re not under arrest yet,” Jones replied. “Yet? I haven’t done s—t to break a law,” Cutter responded.

“That’s fine, but I’m not in charge of this investigation. Corporal Prince of the South Carolina Highway Patrol is and you know just as good as anybody he’s going to come, do his due diligence, and whether he finds a law broken, he’ll make the charge. If he doesn’t, he will not,” the deputy told the attorney.

King Cutter eventually agreed to get in an ambulance and go to a Manning hospital for treatment.

By the time Corporal Datrick Prince pulled up to the crash scene, King Cutter was long gone. Sgt. Jones was still there, preserving the crash scene for the trooper to conduct his investigation.

Prince’s dash camera recording shows he spent exactly seven minutes outside his patrol car, collecting information from Jones and photographing the overturned golf cart and the beer cans and the beer bottle lying on the ground around it.

By the time Prince finished working his case that night, instead of making a DUI case, he charged King Cutter with driving too fast for conditions, driving uninsured, and operating a vehicle which is not registered and licensed.

That decision would thrust Corporal Datrick Prince into the middle of a SCDPS internal investigation.

FAILURE TO PURSUE

Corporal Datrick Prince left the crash scene and drove to the hospital to interview King Cutter. Cutter was lying in a hospital bed when the trooper showed up and Prince had trouble waking the official.

Prince was able to question Cutter, according to the patrol. The interaction between Prince and Cutter was captured on the trooper’s body camera, but since the SCDPS would not release it to us, we cannot confirm the contents of the recording or show the recording to the public.

Within days of Prince writing Cutter up for those three traffic offenses, his bosses pulled his dash camera and body camera recordings and on June 19 – eight days after the crash – Captain C.M. Shelton asked the SCDPS’ Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate Prince’s handling of the driving under the influence investigation.

The OPR complaint Prince’s supervisor filed accused the trooper of Negligence in the Performance of Duties and Negligence in Following Rules, Regulations, Policy, and Procedure. “Despite a subject being impaired, Corporal Prince failed to charge him with Driving Under the Influence,” a document closing the internal investigation stated.

DPS records show OPR opened an investigation the same day Prince’s supervisor asked for it. On August 23, 2023, OPR investigators called Prince to the agency’s Blythewood, SC headquarters to interview him under oath. We obtained the OPR audio recording of the Prince interview through a SCFOIA request.

The recording gives some insight into the Prince-Cutter exchange in the hospital the night of the crash.

“I tried to wake him up at first,” Prince told OPR Captain J. Boehm during the investigatory interview in August. Boehm had Prince swear to an oath before the interview and warned “a person making a false statement under oath may be guilty of purjury.” Prince said he understood the oath and swore to tell the truth.

“Talked with the nurses and they said, ‘Well, no, he should be awake,’ Prince said in the OPR audio recording of the interview we obtained through the SCFOIA.

“Get him awake at that point, started trying to talk to him and stuff like that. And of course, I asked him the questions I asked and stuff like that, but I mean, talking with him right there, I couldn’t smell anything on him. You know, I’m standing from probably half the distance between me and you right now and I couldn’t smell anything on him, you know,” Prince told OPR.

READ THE FULL 42-PAGE OPR REPORT HERE:

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The trooper’s body camera recording captured Cutter telling Prince he had been drinking that night, according to Captain Boehm’s questioning of Prince. The OPR captain eventually began to push back on Prince’s questioning of Cutter, “So he tells you that he had been consuming alcohol, your next question is: ‘What year is that golf cart?’ Why did you not ask him any follow up questions, such as, what time? How much, etc., etc.?”

“I wouldn’t be able to do field sobriety, anything like that. I mean to me it was not going to be sufficient to ask all those questions and not be able to do field sobriety,” Prince told OPR. The trooper explained Cutter couldn’t submit to field sobriety tests becuase of a leg injury and what Prince called a “head injury” prevented him from performing horizontal gaze nystagmus, a test where an officer has a suspect follow the tip of a pen with their eyes, looking for involuntary eye movements.

The test yeilds an indicator of alcohol influrence and is used as one of the elements to establish probable cause to arrest someone for driving drunk.

Here’s a partial transcript of excerpts of the exchange between Boehm and Prince:

OPR: “But Corporal, you have other options, do you not, sir? Such as getting blood?”

PRINCE: “Yeah.”

OPR: “Well, so you thought enough to ask him if he’s been drinking and when he acknowledges that he has, you ask no follow up questions, none. You don’t go in and seek a blood sample. Why not, sir? Because the evidence is there, captured by you, these beer cans and your body camera asking him if he’s been drinking, and he tells you yes.”

PRINCE: “You know, like I said, it is not illegal to have beer, beer cans in your vehicle. I mean, I didn’t touch them to see whether they were fresh or anything like that. So that was out of the question at that point.”

OPR: “Corporal, I would agree with you, it’s not illegal to have beer cans, but I just showed you that at least two of these beer cans are open.”

PRINCE: “Yes, sir.”

OPR: “We got an overturned single vehicle collision with injuries at 1:25 in the morning, and then you got a subject that admits to you in the hospital that he’s been drinking. So, the question is, sir, you have 16 years of experience as a state trooper enforcing this type of law. You have seven or eight years as a supervisor in one of the busiest, busiest counties we’ve got; Richland, in Troop One. You’re not a rookie.”

PRINCE: “No.”

OPR: “By any stretch of the imagination. You knew what you’re supposed to do, sir, right? And I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying that. But you knew what you should have done. You know that you should have investigated this as a DUI collision, and you didn’t. And I’m asking you why.”

PRINCE: “Like I said, I didn’t feel like I had enough to go forward. Like I said, he answered my questions to the best of his ability.”

OPR: “He sure did, sir. He told you, ‘Yes, I’ve been drinking.’ And yet you did not pursue a blood sample.”

The investigator told Prince, the perception of what happened in Clarendon County is an issue. Here’s a partial transcript of that exchange:

OPR: “You never asked him what time. After he tells you, ‘Yes. Yes. I had a little,’ you didn’t ask him how much and you didn’t ask him specifically when. Your next question is what year is  the golf cart. And then it turns out that he has a position that’s a prestigious position.”

PRINCE: “Right.”

OPR: “So you understand how it looks?”

PRINCE: “Right.”

OPR: “It looks like he got some preferential treatment because of his position.”

PRINCE: “That is definitely not it.”

Prince also appeared to explain why – at one point in his investigation in Clarendon County – he thought charging Cutter with DUI might have been a waste of time, “I’ve done a lot of DUI prosecution and stuff like that to understand how the system works as far as prosecuting DUI and stuff like that. Me trying to prosecute that case, it would have stayed on the docket for two years and it would have got pled down to a reckless, even if I pursued a DUI and tried to get blood and all that stuff,” Prince told OPR.

“When you say that with all your experience, which admittedly is extensive, that this would have sat on the docket for two years, have been pled down, that he’s an attorney, he knows how the system works and all that. Is that why you didn’t pursue it further?” Boehm asked, “No,” Prince replied.

“Let me clarify. I’m not saying: did you give him preferential treatment because of his status as attorney, like I’m going to take care of him because he’s an attorney. You’ve already told me that that’s not the case. But did you not pursue it as hard as you should have because you felt like it was kind of a losing battle because of his status as an attorney, not an effort to do him a favor, but like you said, you knew how it would end up anyway?” Boehm asked. “I just made that statement because I’ve arrested attorneys and stuff like that. And, it’s not my first rodeo as far as prosecuting DUI. I was just making the point of had I made the DUI charge, it would have sat on the docket for two years, or whatever the case may be, and then it would have been pled down to a to a reckless driving,” Prince responded.

“Okay, and you didn’t indicate that that was the case, that was just a question I had after you said it. I was wondering if that maybe played a factor in it. And you’re saying that that didn’t play a factor?” OPR asked, “No, it didn’t,” Prince replied.

‘I DID THE RIGHT THING’

The interview of Corporal Datrick Prince took a total of 33 minutes, 18 seconds. Despite the OPR investigator pushing back and pressing Prince through the interview, Prince believed he did everything he should have done that night.

But his bosses – including the man at the top of the state’s largest law enforcement agency – didn’t think he did.

OPR: “So essentially, what you’re telling me, Corporal, is that you did the right thing that night?”

PRINCE: “Based on my opinion? Yes. I did the right thing. I went out and investigated the collision, being that I didn’t feel like I had enough to go on to write a DUI ticket and prosecute.”

OPR: “And so your first sergeant; and there’s no lieutenant listed here, but I imagine lieutenant looked at it and your captain – you’re saying that they’re way off base by basically saying that you should have pursued this and you should have investigated it as a DUI collision?”

PRINCE: “Well, everybody has the right to their opinion. I mean, I can’t say they’re right or wrong. I mean, that’s their opinion of it. They’re looking at a video, I was there. They have a right to, you know, for Monday morning quarterback it and say, well, you should did this and you should have did that. But at the end of the day, I would be the one that has to prosecute that case in court. And I like I said, I have to feel comfortable, confident to going forward. And like I said, I felt I didn’t have enough to go forward on.”

OPR: “Well, why didn’t you at least pursue a blood sample?”

PRINCE: “I mean, you know as well as I know he’s an attorney, he’s going to refuse that.”

OPR: “Why didn’t you get a warrant? You got a collision with injuries, I mean, you know how to do this stuff, Corporal.”

PRINCE: “I do. I definitely do.”

OPR: “You have a number of years in both a trooper and as a supervisor, you know how to get blood. You know how to get a blood sample.”

PRINCE: “Well, my thing is, I did all that time in Richland and no one has ever said, ‘Oh you were negligent in the performance of your duties,’ far as writing a DUI ticket – I prosecuted and locked up a whole bunch of drunks in Richland County. And they reviewed videos on it. But for them to come out and say, ‘Oh, you know, you were negligent in the performance of your duties, I mean, to me, you’re second guessing my judgment, like, I’m not making the proper call on this.”

On Sept. 6, 2023, SCDPS Director Robert Woods signed a letter, informing Prince each allegation filed against him by his supervisors was sustained.

“From our perspective, he did not do his job. That’s reflected in our OPR report. That’s reflected in the outcome of our disciplinary committee,” Woods told Queen City News Chief Investigator Jody Barr during an interview in his DPS office in November.

“He did not thoroughly investigate the DUI-related collision and he did not follow through with what we believe, from what we’ve been able to gather, would have been an appropriate DUI charge,” Woods said. “So, there’s absolutely no question from the agency’s perspective that he did not do the job. And in that regard, he did not do the public a service. So that’s an issue for us that we want to make sure that we rectify and that we do everything that we can do to ensure that we maintain the public trust.”

Woods’ three-page disciplinary letter to Prince informed the veteran trooper he was demoted from Corporal to Master Trooper, his salary cut by $5,183, and he was to be reassigned to another post that covers Orangeburg and Calhoun Counties.

“What his motivation may have been in not handling it properly, I can’t speak to definitively, but what I can speak to definitively, he didn’t do his job the way it was supposed to be done,” Woods told QCN.

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The director said the complaint against Prince didn’t come from outside of the patrol, it came from the inside. Something the director said he hopes shows the public his agency is committed to doing holding themselves accountable.

“As reliant as you are on video technology in order to keep the public informed and maintain the public trust in the government that’s supposed to serve the public, we equally have become reliant on that video technology to ensure accountability for our people,” Woods said, “It’s not as important as the credibility of our personnel, our supervisory personnel who review that video, see where there’s an issue and report it for the purposes of maintaining accountability of their personnel.”

“That’s what I’m most impressed with every day is when our own personnel say, ‘No, we have a stake in maintaining the public trust and we’re going to ensure that that happens.”

PRINCE: THE SHERIFF’S OFFICE ‘VENDETTA’

When the OPR investigator moved to end the interview with Corporal Datrick Prince in August, he asked the trooper whether he had anything else to add that should be reflected in the OPR investigation.

Prince had something he didn’t mention before: the Clarendon County Sheriff’s Office had impure motives in this. Here’s a transcript of that exchange:

PRINCE: “The only thing I would say is, it wasn’t a question, but it was more so me notifying the captain when he asked me, called me and, you know, told me, you being writ [sic] up. I specifically told him, I said, ‘Hey, Clarendon County’s out to get this guy. I think they have a vendetta against this guy. I made that clear because I mean it’s like, everybody pushing to try to—”

OPR: “You say the sheriff’s office—”

PRINCE: “Yeah.”

OPR: “Is out to get King Cutter?”

PRINCE: “Yeah, I mean, hey, they like: this guy like to drink, he’s a known DUI person. My thing is, if he’s a known drunk in the area and y’all know he like to drink, y’all can pursue stopping him and writing him a ticket and taking him to jail and stuff like that. But, they don’t want to seem like the bad guy because he’s a public defender for Clarendon County, they have to work with him, so they don’t want to seem like the bad guy so they would rather push it off on us or Highway Patrol and myself in particular to write this guy a DUI and try to get him disbarred and stuff like that. And that’s what I made clear to the Captain that day when he gave me the notice, I’m like, you know, they seemed like they out to get this guy. Like they really want me to, you know, make a DUI charge when, like I say, I felt like I didn’t have enough because.”

We asked Clarendon County Sheriff Tim Baxley for an interview to address Prince’s allegation. We provided the sheriff a transcript of Prince’s statements to OPR about his allegations of the deputies’ vendetta against King Cutter.

The sheriff would not interview with us, instead sent this statement:

The body camera recording Baxley released to us shows his deputies — aside from recognizing a potential conflict on scene in handling the Cutter investigation — followed policy by calling the Highway Patrol in to take the case over.

Prince told OPR he didn’t know Cutter before that night and had no dealings with him before then.

Sgt. Lane’s incident report that night also shows the deputy believed Cutter was “heavily intoxicated” and the official “had a [sic] odor of alcoholic beverages emitting from his person, as well and [sic] multiple opened and unopened beer bottles and cans surrounding the golf cart and Cutter’s person.”

Prince’s interview also revealed his feelings about the patrol working drunken driving cases instead of the Clarendon County Sheriff’s Office, “I mean, I read the Clarendon County report, but I rather see them make DUI arrests, they always call us to make DUI arrests, So, everybody has the opinion on, you know, who’s drunk or whatnot.”

We asked SCDPS Director Robert Woods about Prince’s vendetta allegations, “Is it the patrol’s position that you all believe that these deputies were out to get this man, or do you believe there was a case to be made that night and it should have been made,” Barr asked Woods in the November interview. “Well, let me take that in two parts, obviously. Number one: I can’t speak to what anybody’s motivation was and how they how they responded to that incident that night,” Woods said.

I’ll speak from again, from the patrol’s perspective. From the department’s perspective, there was a case that should have been made by the Highway Patrol that night. It was not made. We are going back, as we do in every incident such as this. If we can correct things, we will correct things. Charges have been made, will ensure that those charges are effectively prosecuted,” Woods said.

The agency determined it could not obtain the evidence needed to charge Cutter with DUI. The SCDPS assigned an attorney from the Office of General Counsel to prosecute the traffic cases alongside Prince.

“If something had been done that was unethical in that regard (as far as Prince protecting Cutter), then obviously the outcome would have been different and most likely would have been more severe than what it was.”

HIS DAY IN COURT

King Cutter and Corporal Datrick Prince were supposed to face one another at a bench trial on August 9, 2023, before Clarendon County Chief Magistrate Robin Moody. Days before the hearing, we submitted a camera request to Moody, asking to be allowed in with a video camera to record the hearing.

South Carolina judges have the sole authority to decide whether outsiders can come in and video record court proceedings.

Moody, in a phone call with Barr in August, granted the camera request. But, the day before the hearing, Deputy Clerk of Court Susie McDowell emailed to say the hearing was canceled, “Cpl. Prince’s cases will be continued until another date,” McDowell wrote.

Over the next three months, the court never called the case or set a new hearing date. Neither side filed a motion for a jury trial and the court would not explain its reasons for letting the case to sit on the docket for so long without resolution.

We checked with the court several times over the next three months, asking for a court date. We asked SC Court Administration for the rules governing docketing cases and sent the agency a detailed explanation of what was happening in Clarendon County, but the agency would not explain the court’s processes or whether this was typical behavior from a court clerk’s office.

McDowell’s office also would not provide any information about Cutter’s case when we initially reached out to the office in August, telling QCN the clerk’s office does not tell the public information about cases in its courts and only provides information to “parties” involved in cases – including when cases are scheduled for court.

We emailed McDowell again on Nov. 9 asking whether she’s scheduled a court date. McDowell never responded to that email.

Luckily, when we asked McDowell for the court date, we already found out from the patrol that the hearing was set for Nov. 15. We still do not know why the Clarendon County Magistrate’s Court would not tell us the hearing date.

We submitted a second camera request to McDowell and Judge Moody to record the Nov. 15 hearing, but this time Moody denied our request, “Judge Johnson and Chief Judge Moody have discussed this matter and will welcome your presence but feel cameras and/or recording equipment in the courtroom will be disruptive and therefore, will not be allowed,” McDowell wrote in a Nov. 14 email to Barr. Even though there was no jury pulled for the hearing, Moody ignored a follow up email asking for an interview with her to explain why she wouldn’t let us in to show the public video of the hearing.

Here is that email exchange:

When court started at 2 p.m. on Nov. 15, neither Trooper Prince nor King Cutter had arrived. The court already notified its armed private security guard to keep our camera out of the building by the time we got to the front door of the courthouse.

A trooper, with “Nicholson” on his name plate, also joined the security guard at the front door, warning us not to bring the camera inside, “I guess they don’t want you brining that camera in, I don’t know what the issue is with that, but y’all going to have to leave the camera out here.”

Although troopers typically handle traffic violations, Nicholson appeared poised to enforce the clerk’s order to keep a news camera out of the public building.

While we watched the parking lot, the court opened the back door of the courthouse and started letting people in the back. When we went around, the back door was swinging open and Nicholson appeared to close it behind another trooper who walked into the courthouse through the unsecured entrance.

The unsecured entrance appeared to be an apparent attempt to keep us from finding the people we were there to see. The first of those people, Trooper Datrick Prince, pulled up behind the courthouse at 2:06 p.m. and went straight toward the unsecured door.

We caught up to him as he got out of his patrol car, “Mr. Prince? Hello?” Barr asked as Prince walked to the rear door, “Yes, sir?” Prince replied. “Can we talk to you before you go in?” Barr asked, “No, sir, I can’t,” Prince responded. “Did you do a favor for this public official the night you went to that crash scene?” Barr asked as Prince got to the courthouse door.

“Is there anything you want to say?” Barr asked as Prince closed the unsecured courthouse door behind him.

At 2:20 p.m., King Cutter pulled into the back parking lot of the courthouse and parked. It appeared as though Cutter expected to be let into the back door, as well, but after a few minutes, Cutter backed out of the parking spot and drove back around to the front of the building.

We tried to speak with Cutter on his way into the courthouse. Here’s the transcript of that exchange:

BARR: “How you doing, Mr. Cutter?”

CUTTER: “Hey.”

BARR: “Hey, I’m Jody Barr with Queen City News. Can we grab you before you head in?”

CUTTER: “Nah, that’s all right, I sent you a statement, that will work.”

BARR: “Were you drunk the night you crashed that golf cart?”

CUTTER: “I sent you a statement, Jody, I appreciate it.”

BARR: “You didn’t address the alcohol allegations from the patrol.”

CUTTER: “Okay, good to see you.”

BARR: “All right, man, call me if you change your mind.”

Cutter walked into the front doors of the courthouse, right through the door held open by the armed private security guard who blocked us from entering with a camera earlier.

We called the Third Judicial Circuit Public Defender’s Office on Nov. 6, 2023, to leave a message and to ask for his official email address. We emailed Cutter that day. He responded two days later, apologizing for “the delay,” and provided this statement:

When we entered the courthouse on Nov. 15, Cutter, the trooper, and a member of the SCDPS Office of General Counsel were meeting in a room labeled “Courtroom B.” The trio spent several minutes in the room before walking out to the main courtroom where the judge called the case.

The SCDPS attorney worked out a deal with Cutter: The patrol would dismiss the unregistered vehicle and no insurance tickets if Cutter agreed to plead guilty to driving too fast for conditions. The judge accepted the plea deal and the assistant public defender walked out of traffic court after paying a $155 fine.

During the hearing, Cutter handed up two documents. One was proof he now had the golf cart insured, the other was a copy of insurance coverage for the golf cart. We asked the patrol for copies of what Cutter handed up to the court.

The patrol sent us two documents, which shows Cutter got the insurance and registered his golf cart with the S.C. Department of Motor Vehicles. The documents show Cutter got the registration and insurance on June 12, the day after the patrol charged him with driving uninsured and unregistered.

A photograph in the Highway Patrol’s OPR file shows Cutter’s golf cart was previously registered. The sticker shows the registration expired in February 2020, three and a half years before the crash.

We asked SCDPS why the agency’s attorney agreed to dismiss charges that appeared to be properly filed given the dates provided on the Cutter documents. The agency’s spokeswoman, Heather Biance, sent this statement about the agency’s handling of the Cutter prosecution:

We again attempted to give Trooper Prince and Cutter another chance to have their sides included in this report as both men left court on Nov. 15.

“Mr. Cutter, do you feel like you got some help that night from this trooper by not investigating the DUI?” Barr asked. “I’m heading over to football practice where I coach, we’re trying to win a state championship Friday night, appreciate you coming to the meeting, have a good day,” Cutter responded. “Do you think that you were treated differently than anybody would have been that night?”

Barr asked Cutter as the public defender opened his car door to leave.

“Not at all, not at all,” Cutter said before driving out of the courthouse parking lot.

We found Trooper Prince where we first encountered him, at his patrol car outside the unsecured rear door of the magistrate’s office, “Do you have any regrets from that night about this case?” Barr asked Prince, “No comment, man.”

“You know what the perception is here is that you did a public official a favor. Is there anything you want to address about that?” Barr asked the trooper. Prince again answered with, “No comment.”

“Do you still think the deputies were out to get this public official that night like you told OPR?” Barr asked. Prince again answered, “No comment, man,” then closed the door of his Dodge Charger, fired it up, and drove away from the magistrate’s back parking lot.

The disciplinary letter does not contain an end date for how long Prince’s reassignment to Orangeburg and Calhoun Counties might last. Prince was assigned to the post in his home county. A search of the distance to Orangeburg shows a 60-mile, 1 hour, 1 minute one-way trip from his Clarendon County hometown.

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