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A friend bet him that he couldn’t do better on the test. He said he could. He took the test – and passed. What began with a bet nearly 40 years ago will slow down early next year when Norway’s James C. Williams retires after 10 years as resident circuit court judge for the 1st Judicial Circuit.
“It’ll be a little less work and a little more money,” the 65-year-old Williams said. “I’m certainly grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to serve the people of South Carolina, and I’m looking forward to serving for a long time to come, the good Lord willing.”
Williams’ retirement won’t be official until Jan. 17. He said his plans are to continue in a full schedule of court for six months after. A 10-year veteran of the bench, Williams will then preside over circuit court for three weeks out of the month instead of the full four, with much of that time in the Upstate, he said.
First Circuit Solicitor David Pascoe said he was at a judicial conference recently where he said he was “sadly surprised” to hear Williams would retire.
“He is without question one of the best circuit court judges in the state. Period,” Pascoe said. “Very seldom is it when you find both prosecution and defense attorneys agreeing to that fact.”
It was 39 years and an estimated 20,000 cases ago that Williams took the Law School Admission Test, winning that friendly bet.
A few years later, the Clemson graduate was traveling through Columbia when he spotted a new building -- the University of South Carolina Law Center. Weary of the farm life, his LSAT score came to mind, Williams said.
“I have two questions for you,” Williams recalls asking the law school registrar. “Number one, what would I have to do to get in law school? And, two, what are my chances of being accepted?”
The registrar pulled Williams’ file with the LSAT score and went over the records.
“And he sat there going, ‘Mm huh, mm huh, mm huh,’” Williams said. “He said, ‘Fill out this application. And to answer your question, you’ll get accepted.’”
That was in 1976.
One of five siblings, the 33-year-old Williams started on the path to what would become a wonderful career in the courtroom.
“I was taking care of the farm, the dairy operations and going to school on the side,” he said.
Milking cows and arguing legal points at the same time came to an end in 1979 when he graduated, a newly minted private attorney.
For the next four years, Williams worked with Buddy Nichols. In 1983, he practiced law with Barney Houser, today the city judge for Orangeburg.
In 1992, Williams was the initial attorney for the town of Springfield during a case involving former Police Chief Henry Dukes, accused of murder after a motorist was shot during a traffic stop.
At the time of the shooting, Williams stated, “I think the town is surprised. We haven’t seen or heard anything that indicates it didn’t happen like Chief Dukes said it did.”
The U.S. Justice Department dropped the case against Dukes after a three-year investigation failed to find any evidence of wrongdoing.
Six months after the altercation and with more than 10 years of practicing law behind him, Williams accepted a position with the 1st Circuit Solicitor’s Office under former Solicitor Walter Bailey.
As deputy solicitor, Williams had a goal of cleaning up the nearly 2,000 backlogged cases while moving the incoming cases.
“I would periodically go over and literally dig out 10 or so cases and hand them out,” he said. “I told my lawyers I wanted them moved.”
As deputy solicitor over Orangeburg and Calhoun counties, Williams was everything from office manager to prosecutor for some of the area’s more heinous cases, including the 1995 case of a 64-year-old Orangeburg man charged with raping several young boys over decades.
After being found guilty, the man was sentenced to 15 years in prison, a sentence Williams disagreed with then and now.
“I proved 40 years of sexual abuse,” he said. “Those things just tear your heart out, a child victim, child abuse. I never realized until I prosecuted that case how victims suffer when they are sexually abused.”
In 1998, Williams was short-listed for the 1st Circuit judge position left open when Judge Charles W. Whetstone Jr. of Calhoun County announced his resignation.
When Williams was selected for the post, he stated, “I worked in the business world for 11 years before I went to law school, I practiced civil law for 14 years and for the past five years, I’ve practiced exclusively criminal law. I think each of these perspectives brings something desirable to the bench.”
It wasn’t long before Circuit Court Judge James Williams was given his baptism by fire.
In a civil case centered around an ID theft prevention program, Williams utterly rejected then-S.C. Attorney General Charlie Condon’s arguments against the state of South Carolina’s sale of driver’s license photographs. Williams refused to issue an injunction against a private company using the photographs for an anti-fraud system marketed to merchants. Williams disagreed with Condon’s arguments, saying there was no invasion-of-privacy issue.
However, a state contract with the security company was later withdrawn and settled, the judge said.
“I’ve always thought that was a tragedy for the people of South Carolina and the nation,” he said. “That was a pilot program.”
A civil case against the S.C. Department of Natural Resources over its plan to thin the deer population on Hilton Head Island drew witnesses from across the country.
“My job is such a pleasure when both sides have good attorneys,” he said. “It is horrible when one or both sides have inadequate lawyers. This case had superb lawyers.”
But Williams has also presided over the horrendous cases that can shake the imagination, such as the 14-year-old boy whose bones were found in a wooded area. A 17-year-old friend was charged in the murder.
Or the woman who was charged with murdering two infant boys by shaking them. Twice, the woman’s case ended in mistrial.
The third trial, which was filmed for Court TV, resulted in a jury finding the woman guilty. Williams sentenced her to life in prison.
“It was terrible to sit there. On several occasions during the testimony, I had to kind of turn to the side,” he said in an interview after the trial. “It wouldn’t work for the jury or anybody else to see the judge sitting there with tears in his eyes.”
In Dorchester County, a female teen became what Williams describes as “insanely jealous” when she saw her former boyfriend leaving a movie theater with another girl. The jealous teen used her car to run over the pair, killing the other girl and seriously injuring the boy, he said.
“You can’t count the number of victims, the family of the girl who died, the boy who was horribly injured, this girl’s family,” Williams said. “She pleaded guilty, got a stiff sentence.”
In yet another case, a young married man had been denied a driver’s license because of a rare medical condition which caused him to black out without warning. His wife usually drove him to work.
However, the day came when the man attempted to drive himself. Along his route, two off-duty police officers had stopped to help a woman change a flat tire along Interstate 26.
“He hit them, all three, killed the two men, the woman was horribly injured,” Williams said. “He had been told by doctors, ‘You can’t drive, you can’t drive, you can’t drive.’ It was a sad case.”
In another case, a guy in Aiken became angry at his girlfriend. To get back at her, he stabbed the woman’s puppy and stuck its body to the wall.
“That’s mean,” the judge said. “Now that’s just meanness.”
Williams said that as a result, the man learned how mean the court can be.
During a court session in Florence, a woman came before Williams expecting a slap on the wrist for her 15th count of shoplifting, he said.
The woman left the courtroom in a police officer’s bear hug after she went berserk when she was sentenced to 10 years in prison, Williams said.
Then there were some courtroom incidents that could be filed under the humor column, like the juror who fell asleep during a trial. Williams asked the other jurors to retire to the jury room, leaving the man sitting there by himself, head tilted back, mouth wide open.
Then there was the guy who blacked out and fell backward just prior to his sentencing. Williams watched as the man’s eyes rolled back, followed by the rest of his body.
As he reflects on his pending retirement, Williams said he’ll miss the friendship of his law clerks who traveled across the state with him.
“I’ve been lucky enough to have 11 of the finest young lawyers in the state,” he said.
But during his tenure he’s also been disheartened by the apathy society as a whole appears to have for its court system.
Having spent half his life in the courtroom, Williams said he believes society would rather turn a blind eye toward the community’s problems than address and correct them.
“You see one aspect of our society, they don’t want to see that,” Williams said. “They don’t want to see the guy standing there at Christmas with nothing for his children. They don’t want to see that.”
Through the years, Williams has been known as the “Hurricane Judge” and later as the “Sex Judge,” the latter due to the number of cases of a sexual violence over which he presided.
A native and lifelong resident of Norway, Williams says neither of those truly fits. He believes the appropriate moniker for him would be something a bit more sympathetic.
“I think I’ve gotten more compassionate in the last 10 years,” he said. “I think I’ve seen so many people standing before me who are not evil people who have done bad things. I think I’m more understanding of the circumstances that put people in front of me.”
The man charged with robbery because he had nothing to give his children at Christmas was a case adjudicated before Williams just this week.
The man, despite his precarious position, asked Williams one favor before he was led away. The man asked Williams if he could give his wife one last hug before he went to prison.
“I let him,” Williams said.
All from a bet that happened nearly 40 years ago.
T&D Staff Writer Richard Walker can be reached at rwalker@times anddemocrat.com or at 803-533-5516. Discuss this and other stories online at The TandD.com.
Notable cases
September 2002 -- Judge Williams set bond on one of three men charged in the robbery and sexual assault of an Adden Street family at $500,000.
Then-First Circuit Solicitor Robbie Robbins said, “Not only did they rob him of their money, but they robbed him of his wife and a 13-year-old child. ... This is easily the worst case I have seen short of death up here in the 1st Circuit.”
August 2003 -- In a case that drew national attention, Williams sentenced Terrence Britt of St. George to 10 years, suspended to four years after he pleaded guilty to unlawful conduct toward a child.
The lifeless body of Britt’s six-year-old autistic son, Gabriel, was found in a pond after searchers from across the country traveled to the Palmetto State to assist in the rescue effort. All charges against the boy’s mother, Renee Britt, were eventually dropped.
December 2004 -- Williams sentenced 31-year-old Dominic Michael Gingrich to 13 years in prison. The Orangeburg man pleaded guilty to a high-speed drunk-driving car crash that killed a local 21-year-old hospital worker who aspired to be a nurse.
March 2006 -- Williams sentenced Marvin L. Meek to life in prison without parole after the then-50-year-old Meek was found guilty in the 2001 attack on retired orthopedist Dr. Joel R. Graziano of Orangeburg.
Officials say that on April 30, 2001, a “very well-dressed” Meek attacked Graziano in his car in the driveway of his Brookside Drive home. Graziano was hit several times in the face with a pistol. After a struggle, Graziano escaped and his 2000 Jaguar was stolen.
August 2006 -- After more than two days of testimony, a jury spent less than two hours reaching a guilty verdict against 29-year-old Roger Johnson, the man accused of shooting and wounding two Orangeburg County sheriff’s deputies in 2005. Williams sentenced Johnson to life in prison.
“I felt sorry for you when this all started. ... You’ve spent most of your life in prison,” Williams told Johnson. “But you’ve demonstrated an attitude in this court that is both puzzling and frightening.”