Tag: life

GANSTA STYLE

March 26th, 2026

A client of mine and her sister lived and raised their families in apartments next door to each other on the east side of Charleston. The sister’s daughter got involved in an abusive relationship and was forced to call 911 when she was violently assaulted by her boyfriend. The police arrested the boyfriend and charged him with Criminal Domestic Violence. The daughter moved back home to live with her mother while he was incarcerated on a Twenty-five Thousand dollar bond conditioned on him having no contact with the daughter.

It didn’t take long for the boyfriend to raise the ten percent cash needed to bond out and the very first thing he did upon release was go over to my client’s sister’s house where the daughter was staying to demand that she drop the charges. My client’s son happened to be visiting when the boyfriend showed up demanding to talk to his girlfriend. My client’s son walked over to to his aunt’s apartment to remind the boyfriend he wasn’t allowed to be there but the boyfriend told him to mind his own fucking business. When my client’s son insisted the boyfriend had to leave, the boyfriend came at him aggressively apparently thinking beating him up would be as easy as beating his girlfriend up. My client’s son beat the livin’ shit out of him. No one called the cops but bad blood remained between the boyfriend and son.

Several months later their paths crossed again in a night club. My client’s son was headed to the bathroom when he walked by the boyfriend and his homies standing by the bar. The son just kept on walking but the boyfriend and his friends followed him down the hallway to the restrooms. My client’s son stopped, turned around, and withdrew a small 25 caliber ACP, automatic Colt pistol, from his jacket pocket just as he was about to be jumped from behind. Upon seeing the gun, the boyfriend’s friends and he about climbed over each other trying to run the other way. The son fired one shot in the commotion that just happened to hit the boyfriend right in his ass.

My client’s son had the good sense not to run away or make any incriminating statements when he was arrested and charged with Assault and Battery with Intent to Kill, a felony carrying 20 years. He became my client, pled not guilty, and we demanded trial by jury beginning the agonizingly long wait to get one. Meanwhile the boyfriend’s CDV charge languished because he had become a cooperating witness for the prosecution.

Now, you might think my new client he had a rock-solid defense but prior to 2024 it was illegal for anybody to carry a concealed weapon without a permit in South Carolina and shooting somebody in the back who’s trying to get away from you was frowned upon in self defense cases in the eyes of the law. Fortunately, the only real defense in a murder or attempted murder case is that is the guy who got shot was a son of bitch and my client was the perfect person to shoot him.

Most people think all judges are the same but in the criminal court there are two different kinds of judges. There are plea judges defendants will line up to plead before because they accept plea bargains and are willing to impose probationary sentences and trial judges defendants avoid like the plague because they would sentence a nun to hard time for jaywalking. The Honorable Kristi Harrington was our assigned judge for trial and , as a former prosecutor, she was definitely of the later variety. This would be my first trial appearing before her.

Things got off to a rocky start with the crime scene photographs. I’ve written before about the nasty habit of small caliber bullets to ricochet around inside bodies they enter butwho knew the buttock was so full of arteries? Apparently the bullet in this case shredded the boyfriend’s superior gluteal artery resulting in copious quantities of red blood being sprayed all over the hallway to the bathroom. The jurors’ gasps when shown the pictures were not a good sign. I did my best highlighting it was only one shot from a small caliber pistol but the damage to my self defense defense had been done.

The medical examiner’s and investigating officer’s testimony was like a base line tennis match with volleys going back and forth and neither side gaining much in the way of an advantage. Then the prosecutor called the boyfriend to testify and things started to heat up. I had just begun my proof the boyfriend was a son of a bitch when Judge Harrington saw where I was headed and cut me off. She precluded me from getting into the details of him being charged with CDV because he hadn’t been convicted and, in her gratitious words to the jury, was presumed innocent. Likewise, she precluded me from even mentioning the boyfriend’s friends had pending Trafficking Crack cocaine charges for the same reason. I wasn’t making much headway on my the boyfriend was a son of a bitch defense but, meanwhile, the boyfriend testified my client shot him with his gun held sideways “gansta style.” I jumped up and strenuously objected but Judge Harrington quickly overruled my objection. I know I shouldn’t have but the unfairness of her ruling got under my skin and I muttered under my breath loud enough for everyone to hear, “Great, I can’t say his friends are crack cocaine dealers but he can call my client a ganster.”

Judge Harrington turned flaming red and demanded to know what I’d said. I stood my ground and said I had excepted to her ruling my client could be called a gangster in front of the jury. She threatened me with contempt for any similar gratitious comments. I could see the jury taking it all in but couldn’t read their reaction.

Even restricted I was able to paint the picture of the bad blood between the boyfriend and my client cross examining the prosecution witness and I completely filled in the picture when I called my client to the stand. Now, normally, calling a defendant to testify is ill advised for a myriad of reasons that are not applicable in a self-defense case. The defendant has to testify in such cases. He had no prior record and the only hurdle he had to overcome was his carrying a gun into the nightclub that night. Thankfully, he testified forthrightly that he brought it with him because he knew the boyfriend’s reputation for violence.

He was a likeable defendant whose testimony carried the day and the jury returned a not guilty verdict. One of the jurors came up to me after the trial to tell me a couple of jurors were upset the judge had to dress me down during the trial but he told them a lawyer isn’t doing their job if they’re not fussed at by the judge at least once during a trial . In fairness to Judge Harrington, I shouldn’t have let ruling get to me but, all in all, I think by the end of the trial she’d stopped being so prosecution-oriented and she I know she was satisfied with the verdict. It wouldn’t be the last case I tried before her and we got along afterwards. I always found I could earn a judge’s respect when I fought a hard case for my clients, especially when I won. I tried my last murder case in front of her but I’ll write about that story another day.
A Constitutional Crisis in Cottageville

March 22nd, 2026

Let me just begin by saying my wife, Mary, likes studying people while waiting in places like restaurants and airports. There we were waiting to board a flight when Mary leaned over and whispered in my ear, “There’s a woman over there that’s cutting you killer eyes.” I looked up and there she was, the antagonist of a constitutional crisis that occurred in Cottageville, South Carolina, a small town in rural Colleton County with a population just shy of eight hundred.

        The wife of an old client of mine was sued being for being part of a civil conspiracy to defame the reputation of the Cottageville Town Clerk and have her unceremoniously fired from her job. It all began when the former mayor of Cottageville was killed driving eighty-something miles an hour on the county’s back roads. The newly elected mayor thought it would be wise as part of his orientation for his new job to meet individually with the town’s staff. The meeting with the town clerk lasted longer than most, in fact, it seemed never ending.

People began noticing the mayor’s and clerk’s cars parked outside the locked Town Hall at all hours, day and night. Tongues in the small town began wagging. The gossip escalated when the mayor gave the clerk a brand new desk placed right outside the mayor’s office with a large ornate clerk sign. In contravention of the town’s time-honored open-door policy, henceforth people were told they needed an appointment to meet with either the mayor or town clerk and the clerk’s snooty attitude if the new rule was violated ruffled more a few feathers in the town.

        Idle gossip allegedly became slander when the clerk was flat out accused of having an affair with the mayor at the local beauty salon. The clerk’s specifics as to who, what, where, and when the alleged slander occurred were exceedingly vague. But the clerk maintained it was the beginning of the end of her virtuous reputation

        The next act in furtherance of the alleged conspiracy occurred at the local bank. A teller allegedly repeated the slander when the clerk demanded immediate service ahead of other customers. The teller’s comments included a suggestion the clerk should take the town’s business elsewhere allegedly causing pecuniary damage to her livelihood.

        It was the Cottageville dry cleaner who brought the simmering constitutional crisis to a boil. Cottageville being such a small town it was not unusual for the dry cleaner to deliver cleaned laundry right into your home. One day the good citizens of Cottageville, including my client, were enjoying their lunch at the Good Eats restaurant on the main drag when the dry cleaning lady came in an excitedly exclaimed for all to hear, “You won’t believe what I just saw!” She went to describe how she entered the mayor’s back door, like she always did when delivering his dry cleaning, she encountered the mayor standing with his pants down around his ankles and the clerk on her knees by the kitchen table. It took all of about ten seconds for this news flash to be repeated to every inhabitant of the town.

        And it was the last straw for the good ladies of Cottageville, my client included, who decided to join together and run for Town Council for the express purpose of firing the clerk. And, they won the election and did exactly that. Good riddance, well not so fast. The town clerk retaliated by filing a lawsuit against the town and all the newly elected council members for besmirching her reputation and destroying her ability to earn a living.

The lawyers representing the other defendants and I filed answers to the lawsuit denying the allegations, pleading truth as a defense, and raising as many affirmative defenses as we could think of. We answered discovery and, after four or five months racking up legal fees, we were finally ready to take the clerk’s deposition. With the town, mayor, and co- defendants all having lawyers, the deposition was well into the second day when it was my turn to cross-examine the clerk. The lawyer’s ahead of me had already elicited adamant denials of infidelity from the clerk and I certainly felt no reason to beat that dead horse. I focused on what evidence, if any, the clerk had my client actually accused her of anything. Oh, she was right in the thick of it, the clerk claimed, joined right in with those other ladies to do her dirty. When it turned out she didn’t have any evidence my client accused her of anything, I filed a motion for summary judgment.

We drew the Honorable Carmen Tevis to hear the motion. Judge Tevis let it be known in no uncertain terms she had no intention of listening to the sorted details of the alleged debauchery at the hearing. Having already described the details in detail in my not so brief brief, I whole heartedly agreed with the judge and told her it was the complete lack of evidence my client had said anything about the clerk’s conduct that entitled her to summary judgment. When the clerk’s lawyer protested my client had campaigned on a platform to have the clerk fired, I admitted as much but countered with my client had the absolute constitutional rights to freedom of speech, assermblt, and right to petition the government for grievances and, since that was all the clerk alleged my client had done, she was entitled to judgement as a matter of law. Judge Tevis agreed and granted summary judgment.

I mistakenly thought everyone was glad it was over. Certainly, my client, her co-defendants, and the town who all had limited resources to pay mounting legal fees were glad it was over. No appeal was taken from Judge Tevis’ order by the clerk’s counsel who I suspected had unwisely taken the case on a contingency fee and seen the writing on the wall. But, obviously not everybody was glad with the result. Here I was sitting in the airport with my wife worrying I was about to be assaulted by some crazy lady. It is the price we lawyers have to be willing to pay for fighting to preserve and protect our constitutional rights. A price I have paid many times having been appointed to represent despicable people accused of committing horrendous crimes. Although no major movie studio has called offering to buy the rights to this monumental constitutional battle fought out in the back woods of the deep south, I will always consider role in the case as a badge of honor.
DORTHY’S RUBY RED SLIPPERS

September 23rd, 2025

It’s not every day you get a call from the sheriff but I got one from Sheriff Al Cannon asking me to help a former police officer abandoned by his lawyer the Friday before he was scheduled to begin a wrongful termination trial in Federal Court. It’s hard saying no to the sheriff, so I agreed to see what I could do.

        I spoke with the former police officer and learned his lawyer had demanded a ridiculous upfront payment for the trial and, when he couldn’t afford it, the lawyer filed a motion to be relieved as his lawyer. A hearing on the motion was scheduled to be heard that Friday afternoon. I asked him what the case was about and he told me he had been fired by the Charleston Police Department for allegedly associating with a known criminal, but the real reason he was fired was because he refused to lie about drugs having been planted on somebody during a search. Well, now, an honest cop being fired for refusing to lie about planted drugs sounded right up my alley. You’d think I’d have known there was more to the story than what I was being told.

        I had never personally appeared before Judge Houck before and entered my appearance at the beginning of the hearing: J. Kevin Holmes, appearing on behalf of the Plaintiff for the purpose of opposing his current counsel’s motion to be relieved and, if that motion is granted, to move for a continuance so I can prepare to represent him at trial. I don’t think Judge Houck even looked up or asked me to bend over before ruling from the bench, “The motion to be relieved is granted. The motion for a continuance is denied. We’ll see you for trial first thing Monday morning counselor.” I was dumbstruck, which is probably a good thing because if I’d have been to talk, I’d probably been held in contempt for uttering a string of profanities the likes of which has never been heard in a courtroom.

        The enormity of what I’d gotten myself in was just beginning to seep in as I was walking down the courthouse steps and ran into lawyer Bob Haley coming up the other way. I must have looked shellshocked because Bob asked out of genuine concern if I was okay. Still flustered I blurted it out what had just happened as best I could and to my utter amazement, Bob offered to jump right onto my flaming dirigible and help with the trial.

        Bob and I had tried the Columbian dentist case against each other and were both experienced trial attorneys. For those of you who may not be, getting a case ready for trial under normal circumstances is an enormous undertaking. You have to put together your trial notebook starting with jury selection. That requires going over the jury list and the jurors answers to a questionnaire trying to divine who to exclude and who to seat. You have to prepare your pretrial brief giving your version of the facts, identifying legal issues anticipated to arise, who your witnesses will be, and what exhibits you intend to introduce. You have to research and prepare any pretrial motions you’ll want to file. Research and write out the jury instruction you’ll want the judge to charge. Make outlines of the testimony you’ll expect to elicit from each witness. Meet with and prepare your witnesses for their trial testimony. Copy and mark all of the trial exhibits. And, write out your opening statement for the jury. To do all this over the course of one weekend in a case you knew nothing about to start with would take nothing short of a miracle.

        Bob and I camped out in my firm’s library and got started reviewing the file the client’s former lawyer had turned over to us. Needless to say, he hadn’t done any of things I just listed to get ready for trial. Remember when I said I should have known there was more to the story than what I had been told? Well, when we read through the file it didn’t take long for Bob and I to discover our client had settled his wrongful termination suit against the City. That’s right, signed a release and settled it. When we confronted him with this rather inconvenient fact, he sheepishly said he only accepted the settlement because he was allowed to resign with no finding misconduct on his part and he’d been offered a job as a deputy with the Sheriff’s Office but that the City had breached the agreement by recommending to the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy they revoke his certificate needed to be a law enforcement officer in South Carolina. This explained the Sheriff’s interest in the case, but you don’t have to be a legal scholar to figure out its pretty damned hard to sue for wrongful termination from a job you voluntarily resigned from.

Now we realized the case we’d signed up for wouldn’t be about an honest cop fired for refusing to lie about planted drugs, it would be about whether the City fraudulently concealed their intent to recommend his license be suspended to induce the settlement and release. Deepening the legal quicksand we found ourselves in up to our eyeballs, the client’s prior worthless lawyer hadn’t plead fraud in the inducement nor had he conducted any discovery how the City’s recommendation our client’s license be revoked came about.

        Bob and I were left grasping for nonexistent straws when something extraordinary happened. Opposing counsel, Carol Ervin, a very seasoned trial attorney called us on the phone. Carol may have been small in stature, but any lawyer dumb enough to underestimate her courtroom prowess would be making huge mistake. She specialized in employment law and was tough as nails. But late that Friday afternoon she called us to let us know she thought Judge Houck’s denial of a continuance was grossly unfair. To the extent ethically possible, she offered to do anything she could to help bring us up to speed for the trial. Truth is Bob and I already knew there wasn’t much she or anybody was going to be able to do to help us out of the impossible situation we found ourselves in but somehow Carol reaching out to us lifted our spirits and gave us the fortitude to hunker down and do our level best as lawyers to turn the chicken shit we’d been handed into chicken salad.

        Bob and I spent Friday night hitting the library books looking for cases in which a settlement agreements had been set aside. Each time we found something encouraging further research shot us down. We crashed and burned so many different ways it was probably around two a.m. that Bob and I became giddy and started laughing. Bob came up with the notion we should send Carol copies of the cases we’d found pretending they’d save our asses but mostly just so she’d knew we were working ungodly hours while she was sleeping soundly. Somewhere around three thirty that morning, for reasons vaguely related to the unreal situation we found ourselves in and Dorothy saying, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Carol became Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz. I think it was Bob who quoted Dorothy as saying, “Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!” when our research ran into another dead end.

        Carol picked up on our silliness and called us on Saturday. She wasn’t fooled for a second by our caselaw but was impressed by how much fun Bob and I were having. She liked being compared to Dorthy and, I suspect, started to think of us as the Scarecrow and Lion knowing we both already had heart and courage but were somewhat lacking in brains. It was the first of many phone calls and much laughter we shared over that weekend.

        Monday morning came and against all odds Bob and I were ready as anybody could be for trial. I think even Judge Houck felt a little guilty for his Friday ruling and couldn’t help but be impressed by all the hard work Bob and I had put in over the weekend. Of course, that didn’t stop him from cutting us off at the knees every chance he got and directing a verdict in favor of the City at the close of our case. We were exhausted but held our heads high leaving the courthouse that afternoon knowing we’d done our best to help an honest cop whose worthless lawyer had him stranded on the eve of trial.

        We didn’t win the case but our client made out okay. He became a private investigator for one of South Carolina’s premier criminal defense attorneys who regularly stuck it to the City Police Department that had treated him so unfairly. I don’t know for certain but I’d wager he made twice as much as a private investigator than he ever would have made as a Sheriff’s deputy. And me, who had more fun practicing law than almost any lawyer I ever knew, never had more fun winning a case with another lawyer than I had losing the case with Bob. If there’s a higher compliment one trial lawyer can pay another, I don’t know what it is. And we made a friend of Carol Ervin. Bob and I went down to Bob Ellis shoe store on King Street and bought her a pair of woman’s shoes we painstakingly glued ruby red sequins to that we gave to her as present to remember our trial by.
OH, MY GOD ….

September 22nd, 2025

        He loved the feeling of freedom riding his Harley-Davidson 998cc XLS Roadster on the back roads of Berkeley County until a logging truck pulled out in front of him. All he could do was lay his bike down and ride on top of it hoping it would stop before colliding into the truck. And it almost did, his motorcycle was rapidly slowing when something caught sending the bike and him tumbling down the pavement. He was paralyzed with a broken back and badly torn up legs. I had gone to see him in the hospital to discuss representing him in a lawsuit against the trucking company but he was heavily medicated and not in any condition to discuss legal matters. We were just talking when his doctor came into the room.

        The look on his doctor’s face said he didn’t have good news. He didn’t pay me any attentiom when he said there was no easy way to say what he had to say. That they’d done everything they could to restore the blood flow to his legs but gangrene had already begun to set in. The doctor lifted the sbed heet and one of his bandages pointing out the blackening tissueon his paralyzed leg. Unless they amputated his doctor said it would spread to his blood and most assuredly kill him. I could see the news was devastating and was amazed when my client found the courage to calmly ask questions that needed to be asked. Where would they amputate his legs? Above the knees the doctor told him, gently reminding him his legs were already paralyzed. When did they want to do the operation? As soon as possible, later that same day, if he gave his consent. Well, I really don’t have a choice, do I? No the doctor shaking his head. When my client gave his consent I could see the relief spread across the doctor’s face. The doctor nodded his head again saying he would make the arrangements, turned, and left the room.

I followed him out into the hall and called after him. Doctor, I just wanted to say how much I appreciate you being so honest and caring delivering such gut wrenching news. Thank you, he replied. And who are you the doctor asked? I’m Kevin Holmes, his lawyer. The doctor turned as white as the screen upon which this is printed before gasping, “Oh my God, I thought you were his preacher!”

Tag: life

GANSTA STYLE

A Constitutional Crisis in Cottageville

DORTHY’S RUBY RED SLIPPERS

OH, MY GOD ….