Solicitor: Pickens County Needs More Prosecutors

Thirteenth Circuit Solicitor Walt Wilkins III would like Pickens County Council to fund at least one additional prosecutor, so his office can move cases more quickly.

Wilkins made his case for the additional position and funding during a Pickens County Taxpayers Association meeting last month.

He said there's quite a difference in the volume of cases between his current position and his former job as U.S. Attorney.

“Statewide, the U.S. Attorney's Office, under my leadership, we averaged about 1,300 defendants in one year,” Wilkins said. “In Pickens and Greenville Counties, we'll do 7,500. The volume of cases is something I have to take into consideration on a daily basis. Our volume is huge. It's a monster docket.”

The Thirteenth Circuit Solicitor's Office is the state's largest, with an annual budget of $7 million, Wilkins said.

“I have 42 lawyers, not including myself, that prosecute all the cases that Pickens County Sheriff's Office and all the other municipalities make on a daily basis,” Wilkins said. “Once that case is made, we're charged with organizing that case and preparing it for trial.”

Those figures do not include magistrates court, Wilkins said.

“We have lawyers dedicated just to the magistrates court, to prosecute the DUIS, the criminal domestic violence (first offense), property crimes less than $2,000, trespassing, all those type crimes are prosecuted by my office in the magistrates' court,” Wilkins said. “That's thousands more cases.”

His office also oversees juvenile and family court.

He said he knows that “Pickens sometimes feels like it's left out in the cold” compared to Greenville County.

Wilkins said his father, former solicitor Billy Wilkins, told him during his campaign to “make sure Pickens is just as important as Greenville County.”

“I don't see the Thirteenth Circuit as Pickens and Greenville County, I see it as the Thirteenth Circuit and I manage it as the Thirteenth Circuit,” Wilkins said. “I make sure that my lawyers in Pickens, my victims in Pickens, my pre-trial intervention workers … down to the receptionists have the exact resources, the exact same resources as the ones in Greenville.”

The resources “have to be equal” in the two counties, he said.

“We have just as many important cases, just as many significant cases, just as many difficult cases,” Wilkins said.

He said he tries to give Pickens County more resources, a disproportionate amount if you look at Pickens County's population.

“The office here has six lawyers,” Wilkins said. “We had seven up until about 2009, 2010. County Council took one away from us, gave it to the public defender's office. I was not around then, but that's what happened. So we're down to six lawyers

He said he's been asking County Council “from the day I took office to today” to add that lawyer back to the Pickens office.

“I need another lawyer,” Wilkins said. “We cannot move the cases in a timely manner like we need to without another lawyer.”

While he says Pickens County Council is great about allocating resources to his office, the loss of that seventh prosecutor position means he's using a disproportionate amount of his state funding to cover Pickens County cases.

“We get about $750,000 from the state every year,” Wilkins said. “Of that, looking solely at population, Pickens County should get $171,000, to support the solicitor's office, to pay for prosecutors, investigators, victims advocates. However, I now allocate $316,000 … to Pickens, so that they have the resources to continue to do what they're doing.”

Wilkins said he allocates all of the $379,000 raised through pre-trial intervention fees back into the Pickens County office.

His office was also allocated $50,000 to use for victims services programs for the Thirteenth Circuit.

“All of that goes to Pickens County to provide for a victims advocate,” Wilkins said. “None of that goes back to Greenville.”

He said the six lawyers must divide Pickens County's 2,500 annual cases amongst them.

“We have about 250 defendants per attorney,” Wilkins said. “That's too many. If they had 150 defendants, you could maintain a hefty docket.”

Pickens County is allocated one court week per month, he said.

“That's 12 court weeks a year,” Wilkins said. “We average 36-38 trials per year. I have 2,500 folks coming through there. I can try 38 out of them.”

Out of those six lawyers in the Pickens County office, half on one lawyer's time is taken up by Family Court, he said.

He sends staff from the Greenville office to Pickens County for magistrates court.

“We have contract lawyers and full-time solicitors employees that come to Pickens County every single week and try DUIs and criminal domestic violence cases, to make sure those cases are moved,” Wilkins said. “When we started, we had over 350 DUI cases. We're down to less than 100. We moved a tremendous amount of DUI cases. Some of those cases were getting to be two, three, four years old. Now all DUI cases are typically less than one year before they're resolved.”

He sends three lawyers from Greenville to Pickens to assist every term of court, he said.

“They're not in Greenville doing the work they're assigned to do, they're in Pickens ... because we have to maintain what we have,” Wilkins said.

He said he'd like an opportunity to speak to County Council. He said he could use three additional lawyers, but would settle for the one cut out of the budget two years ago.

“Let me come tell you that I need another lawyer to make this happen,” Wilkins said. “Just give me the one back and let me show you what I can do. Hopefully they'll listen to me eventually.”

PCTA President Dennis Reinert said he was sure the lawyer had been cut from the budget to save money.

“But is it actually cost effective to do that?” Reinert asked. “The extra time people spend in prison because you're being a man short doesn't rotate them out, is that actually more expensive than it costs to hire a lawyer?”

“Absolutely, it is,” Wilkins said. “A solicitors, with benefits and everything, costs about $80,000 a year. They can add to the reduction of that prison population and make cases and resolve cases quicker than before. That (additional) lawyer will be able to take another 150-250 cases, to help move through the system and prosecute them.”