JUSTICE SERVED WITH JIMMY RICHARDSON (15th Circuit Solicitor) 8/10/26

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:12

All right, it is 839. Here he is. Uh the 15th Circuit solicitor, Jimmy Richardson. Good morning.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Good morning, guys. Happy Monday.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Yes, happy Monday. So uh Jimmy, I know you always have a list of things that you can bring us up to date on. And in fact, you have a great social media account as well where people can stay up to date on different court cases. But what are we learning? What do you know so far about the Paulys Island Community Church incident um you know regarding Warren Perry? What is the update on that? We heard that there were going to be more arrests, and uh I know you don't really take part in that part, but yeah, I don't.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Um so the question I got the other day was um what whether or not there was going to be more arrest. And I don't think anybody can say that uh right now. Maybe some of the police can, but um, anytime there's an investigation, obviously there's the possibility for more arrest. Um so and that's you know, that's what we would want. We would want people to do a competent investigation. We would want them to talk to all of the right people to see what was uh going on. Liz, I think that um it's it's interesting because anything that gets this much publicity, it also gets a lot of it gets a lot of um you know misinformation out there. Um the defendant, the original defendant, was charged with having child pornography.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

And this is Warren Perry.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Warren Perry.

SPEAKER_02 1:51

Was that here?

SPEAKER_01 1:52

That was here.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Um it was in um, it was actually in Georgetown. Okay. Um it wasn't our case, it wasn't the solicitor's office case. Most of the child pornography cases are attorney general cases, and they've got um a funded group called um ICAC, Internet Crimes Against Children. And um first there's three levels of child pornography. Um obviously, if you think about it, the worst that gets you the most time is if you produce child pornography. If you have two children um, you know, under the age of 16 and you're filming it and you're, you know, action and all of that stuff, that's the worst. The second worst, level two, is if you um distribute it, if you are a blockbuster or if you are a person that is taking in these images. I didn't make them, I didn't sit in the room with the kids, but I am helping to distribute it. That's the second worst. The third worst, and the smallest one, is what Perry was charged with, and that is possession. If you think of it in terms of uh, for all of the younger listeners, they won't even know what this is, but Blockbuster, if you went in and rented it or bought it, that's possession of it. Now you could res uh rent it and then send it back out, and that would be distribution. But Perry is charged that he had possession of child pornography. Um he pled guilty um to an attorney general case back in, I guess, 2021, 2022, and was put on probation for that. That's why everybody that's saying, you know, let's kill this guy, um that is what he was charged with, the lowest level of it, which got him probation instead of a 20-year sentence. If he had videotaped it, he would have probably got a lot more time.

SPEAKER_02 4:06

The question is with a plea, yeah, did he actually do something worse down to this?

SPEAKER_01 4:13

No. We've had maybe five times where in Myrtle Beach, in Conway, somewhere in our area, they had actually produced uh a top-tier um child pornography one. We've had it, you know, just a handful of times. Um we've had it more often, it's like a pyramid. We've had it more often where people would distribute it. But by the vast majority, like ninety-nine percent of it, it's possession of child pornography. And that's what he was charged with, and that's what he pleaded.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

Are you allowed to plead down that type of charge?

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Yeah, yeah, you could. So it is It's possible, but that ain't nobody's accusing him of having created it or distributed it.

SPEAKER_02 5:05

What he was charged with is what he was convicted of is what he was indicted on. Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Yes, and what he was arrested for.

SPEAKER_02 5:12

Now, um it says, you know, he was a registered sex offender, and he should not have been volunteering at that church.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Because it was a school and a church, and kids are there within a thousand feet or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

And that was the easy part. There they're laws that are created once you plead guilty, and and the reason for it is there's been a bunch of studies that that is one of those crimes that has a high tendency to repeat. You know, it's it's very hard for those guys to um not continue on. That's uh psychological, that's a lot of stuff going on that causes them to repeat. So for that, there's laws that are built up to make sure that that person isn't around children. And they're fairly good, especially while he's on probation or parole, at checking, um, so it's the second layer. Whether he was on probation or not, he wasn't allowed around, you know, volunteering.

SPEAKER_02 6:15

And what about computers? Is he allowed to have that?

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Yeah, unless a judge specifically says no, and that's for the pendency of probation. Um he would uh he would be able to have, you know, computers at a at another time, but during probation he may be restricted from that. And we um sometimes do that sort of thing, saying you can't have computers or IP addresses.

SPEAKER_02 6:41

Was he? Do you know the nature of it?

SPEAKER_01 6:43

I I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

Yeah, I don't know what his was were his computers um confiscated this time go this go around?

SPEAKER_01 6:51

I'm sure they were. Um cell phone. Mm-hmm. And this one really was a violation of probation when it came to him.

SPEAKER_02 7:00

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 7:01

Um, which really um started they kind of do everything all over again, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:06

They make sure.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Right. But probation and parole are the ones that um made this arrest because he was on that special uh restriction and he was violating the terms of his probation. Where um the police had a little more uh problem is what to do with the people that control the school. Um and it is clear that if you're a mandatory reporter, i.e. a preacher, a teacher, or anybody that is uh a mandatory reporter, and you have any indication of child abuse going on, you've got to report it. You do not have to report so-and-so is a sex offender. That is that is not part of it. That is like when Liz sends her Jimmy to school, if the guidance counselor, the teacher, or anybody else sees a mark or a bite mark on Jimmy's arm, or Jimmy says, Mama um burnt me with a cigarette, that is what mandatory reporters about, about abuse. Not uh, well, janitor X is a um is on the sex registry. That's why they charged him, uh, all of those people with putting children at unreasonable risk. The mandatory reporter part really didn't fit.

SPEAKER_02 8:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

A mandatory reporter is if you see actual abuse, not a high risk uh of something coming.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

But isn't it illegal to put somebody knowingly in that position?

SPEAKER_01 8:46

It is, it it is, but see, he was a volunteer as opposed to an employee, and that's another wrinkle. Maybe that was a wrinkle thrown in there uh purposefully, I don't know. But um, it wasn't necessarily an employee. And the hardest thing for listeners, for me, for any of us to wrap our head around, is when you're dealing in a courtroom, you're looking at statutes and elements of a crime. And it, I mean, Glenn and I can sit there and agree, boy, this sucks. This shouldn't be this way. But if it's not an element of a crime, then it might be a moral uh problem, it may be a civil problem, it may be a loophole, but um it's not necessarily criminal. Um, so it was, and and I totally agree with what the police were doing with unlawful neglect, uh, because that is a more wide open charge that says you are putting this child at an unreasonable risk um for being hurt. Not to say this child was hurt, so they are working around what's happening, is they're working around laws that are already created out there. And and I kick at the legislators um probably worse than anybody, but the hard part of their job is that they're trying to reach out and foresee every instance of you know, this could go wrong or that could go wrong, or you know, making sure that those elements fit all of those crimes. A lot of your older crimes um are a lot broader, and um like unlawful neglect, um that is an older crime, uh, burglary is an older crime, and that was from generations past and passed down through common law from um England, Judeo-Christian values. But anytime you got a more specific crime that may have took place in the 90s and especially in the 2000s, where they wrote another statute, um because you've got um people that are really hashing it out and trying to create loopholes, that's why this DUI thing. Um, some people uh last year they really pushed for DUI reform. I'm telling y'all, with everything in me, if that were to have passed, it would have been much harder for police to make DUIs. Um that was tons of um, and it's already by defense attorney lawyers that are serving in the legislation. It was it was terrible. Thank God that it was blocked and stopped. They they were having them having to go on the side side of the road and draw blood and stuff. Cops don't do that. I mean, that ain't that's a doctor's job or a nurse. Yeah, that's not a doctor. Um that's that's not for the police. And there are like five police officers or across the state, but there's a lot more DUIs than there are five. So it's um I I have to ask you a question.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

Someone gets caught with child porn, and there are X num, let's say a hundred pictures in there. Um and um some of them date back, you know, months, years, I don't know how long ago they downloaded them or how many times they looked at them. Does that play into the the type of charge they have?

SPEAKER_01 12:26

It's going to. This uh this year, and I am very supportive of this law, um, but this upcoming year, they started uh last year and hopefully it'll pass. But that third tier that I was talking about, child possession of child porn, yeah, um, they're going to tier it if you've got um between five and twenty-five, that's three C. If you've got between twenty-six and a hundred, that's B, and if you've got over a hundred, it's A. So the the more you have, the worse it is. And generally speaking, if a person has one child porn um image, they're going to have a bunch of them because it's every you know it's hundreds, probably.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

Yeah, hundreds. They're doing it every day, all day, just and what about the length of time they've been doing it when you go into the forensics of it?

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Yeah, that really um it as long as you've got child pornography, um, right now, it it doesn't matter if it's from ten years ago or five years ago or yesterday. Um, it would probably matter to a jury. Um, if we were sitting on a jury, yeah, it would um and somebody told me that this was from 1998, I'd be like, come on, guys, if you ain't got him on anything in 28 years, um, okay. But it may matter to them, it really doesn't matter as far as you're getting arrested or prosecuted, um, as long as you're possessing possessing of child pornography. Think about it, child porn, um, you know, we get wrapped up in the weeds. But if you had crack cocaine, now no crackhead's gonna leave crack land around for 28 years, but it doesn't really matter when you made the crack, it's just that you possessed it um uh on this date. Um not the rest of it really doesn't matter.

SPEAKER_02 14:30

So well, Jimmy, we used uh all our time today talking about that, but anything that you wanted to add before we go?

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Um no, I mean we've got um we're we're busy, we're staying busy. There was um shooting last night in Lores. Um I think that um that is they're still trying to um the police may put out something today about asking for help if they haven't made an arrest yet. Last night when I talked about it.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

You've heard of a a person being armed and dangerous on the loose. Is that related to that?

SPEAKER_01 15:02

I bet so.

SPEAKER_02 15:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

Yep. There was uh a murder last night. Um wow in or yesterday afternoon in Lores.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

Gosh, I want to be accurate. It may have been yesterday morning because that they called me somewhere around 12, and it was, you know, of course, they were already looking. But when I checked back in yesterday afternoon, they still had not made an arrest.

SPEAKER_02 15:24

I bet you that's that's that armed and dangerous person they're looking for. Okay. All right. Well, Jimmy Richardson, thank you so much much. The 15th Circuit solicitor. Uh, you can actually uh search for the Facebook page, you're pretty good with keeping everyone up to date um with everything that's happening regarding the um trials and all that. Uh right on Facebook.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

Is that under the it's under 15th analog? Yeah, 15th.

SPEAKER_02 15:52

Um, solicitor's office. There's a lot going on there. Yeah. It's hard, but uh yeah, you gotta spell it out. Well, thank you so much. We appreciate your time as always.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Thanks, guys. Have a great week.