Editor’s note: This is the first story in a series of articles this week on drunken driving issues facing South Carolina. A companion story today can be found here.
For David Longstreet, a blue sky isn’t something peaceful to look at.
On Dec. 31, 2011, the now-56-year-old Lexington County man recalls lying in his front yard with his 6 ½-year-old daughter, Emma, just goofing around with her and throwing acorns into the street to wait for cars to come by and run over the acorns.
The next morning – Sunday, New Year’s Day, 2012 – the family of six, including three boys who were several years older than their sister, Emma, were heading in the family minivan to a later morning church service and were waiting to turn left at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Old Cherokee Road when a drunken driver ran a red light and slammed into the driver’s side of the van.
Emma was seated behind her father, who was the driver.
Longstreet, his wife and sons all suffered injuries. Emma died several hours later at a hospital.
“You look at a blue sky; everybody loves it,” Longstreet said in a recent interview with The Nerve. “But I look at it now, and I think exactly about that day. Before she was killed, we were on our backs, hanging out, playing in the front yard. … And the next day, she’s dead on the road, and I’m looking at a blue sky on my back in the middle of that road.”
The drunken driver, who had a prior DUI conviction, pleaded guilty in 2013 to charges of felony DUI causing death, which carries a maximum 25-year sentence, and felony DUI causing great bodily injury – a 15-year maximum. But he was released to community supervision in Lexington County in 2019 after serving 85% of his nine-year sentence on the fatal DUI plea – as allowed under state law – state corrections and court records show. The state pardon board last year denied his request for a pardon.
After Emma’s death, Longstreet, who successfully sued a Richland County bar in connection with the crash, advocated for a 2014 state law, named after his daughter, mandating ignition interlock devices – which prevent drivers from starting their vehicles if they had been drinking – for convicted repeat offenders with alcohol concentrations of at least .08% and for first-time offenders with alcohol concentrations of .15% or more. Two years ago, that law was expanded at Longstreet’s urging to include anyone convicted of first-offense drunken driving regardless of the alcohol level.
Yet Longstreet, a manufacturing engineer, blames lawmakers in Columbia for the slow pace of DUI reforms.
“Look how long it took – 10 years – to get .08 (the expanded 2024 law),” he said. “I’m really getting pissed off that they haven’t done enough up there.”
A several-month investigation by The Nerve found that the state’s criminal justice system often looks the other way when it comes to drunken drivers.
The Nerve reviewed a total of more than 47,000 charges of driving under the influence (DUI), driving with an unlawful alcohol concentration (DUAC), and felony DUI causing death or great bodily injury for fiscal years 2019-20 through 2025-26, based on records provided in 2025 and this year by the S.C. Office of Court Administration under two separate formal court-rule requests. The fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30 of the following year.
Among The Nerve’s key findings on charges with unique ticket or warrant numbers that were either dropped for various reasons or resulted in convictions or acquittals:
- According to records that the Office of Court Administration acknowledged were inadvertently released to The Nerve last year, 16,241 first-offense, lowest-level DUI and DUAC charges from fiscal years 2020 through 2025 were expunged statewide – meaning individual arrest and court records had been removed from public view, as mandated by state law. The expunged DUI charges, which didn’t identify any defendants by name, represented 47% of all such first-offense cases in The Nerve’s review.
- Of the 16,241 expunged charges, 14,335, or 88%, were identified as being dropped at the prosecution level; the remainder were dismissed for other reasons or were not guilty verdicts.
- When combined with expunged cases, at least a total of 17,770 first-offense, lowest-level DUI charges, or about 52% of the total 34,215 such charges through last fiscal year, were not prosecuted. Another 13,206 charges, or approximately 39% of the total charges, resulted in guilty or no contest pleas, or jury or bench (judge only) guilty verdicts. The total 18,037 non-expunged charges in the total involved 17,788 defendants.
- Out of the remaining 11,426 charges of first- through fourth- or subsequent-offense DUI involving 10,556 defendants over the period, more than 64% resulted in guilty or no contest pleas or verdicts, though nearly a quarter of the charges were listed as dismissed at the prosecution level.
- Compared to DUI cases, prosecutors or officers who often act as prosecutors in first-offense cases pursued far fewer DUAC charges. During the seven-year period, there were a total of 1,022 DUAC charges involving 1,018 defendants, about 92% of which resulted in guilty or no contest pleas or verdicts, with the remainder dropped at the prosecution level or dismissed for other reasons. Critics of DUAC laws contend that because breath test results often can be suppressed in court proceedings, officers typically don't charge offenders under those laws.
- A total of 1,089 second- and subsequent-offense DUI and DUAC charges involving 1,072 defendants over the period were pleaded down to first offenses, including 117 third- and fourth- or subsequent-offense charges that were reduced to first offenses.
- Of the total 516 felony charges of DUI causing great bodily injury involving 420 defendants during the seven-year period, at least 22% were dismissed by prosecutors. More than 60% of the total charges resulted in guilty pleas or verdicts, while the remainder were dismissed for reasons other than listed prosecution dismissals.
- Sentence lengths for 152 defendants who pleaded guilty or were convicted in trials of felony DUI causing death ranged from one year – the mandatory minimum – to the maximum 25 years, though more than half of the total 180 sentences resulted in 12 years or less, according to court and S.C. Department of Corrections records. Of the total 263 fatal DUI charges over the seven-year period, nearly 69% resulted in guilty pleas or verdicts, with about 21% listed as being dismissed by prosecutors. The Nerve's review found at least 29 defendants whose charges were dropped by prosecutors pleaded guilty to lesser charges – typically reckless vehicular homicide – with six defendants receiving probation instead of prison sentences.
- There are potentially big gaps in reliable statewide DUI and DUAC data. The Office of Court Administration informed The Nerve last year that dozens of municipal courts statewide, including some in several larger counties, do not use the state's "case management system."
The Office of Court Administration since last year released more than 74,000 data records to The Nerve on drunken driving charges over the seven-year period, including expunged cases. The Nerve’s review excluded records on apparent pending and transferred cases, as well as preliminary hearings, instead focusing on charges that were dismissed by prosecutors or for various other reasons, or resulted in guilty pleas, guilty verdicts or acquittals.
Meanwhile, South Carolina law enforcement agencies collectively make thousands of DUI arrests every year, with annual arrests statewide increasing from about 11,000 as of July 2020 to nearly 16,000 as of July this year, according to FBI crime statistics, which are based on information provided by states.
‘It’s a weapon’
In South Carolina, you are more at risk of being killed by a drunken driver than just about anywhere in the United States.
In recent years, the Palmetto State has either led the nation or ranked near the top in the rate of people killed annually by alcohol-impaired drivers per 100 million vehicle miles traveled statewide – holding the dubious top spot from 2022 through 2024, according to the most recently available data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Looked at another way, South Carolina ranked at or near the top of the nation in the annual percentage of alcohol-impaired fatalities from 2022 through 2024, from 43% in 2022, which tied with Rhode Island for the highest rate, to 39% in 2023 (3rd highest) and 40% in 2024 (tied for 2nd), NHTSA records show.
From 2020 through 2024, a total of 2,041 persons were killed in alcohol-impaired crashes in South Carolina, according to the 2024 S.C. Department of Public Safety annual crash reports. Last year and this year through September, a total of 354 and 269 persons, respectively, were killed in alcohol or drug-involved traffic collisions statewide, according to preliminary DPS data released to The Nerve.
“They intended to drink too much; they intended to get in a vehicle, knowing that it’s a weapon,” said Laura Hudson, a longtime victim advocate and executive director of the South Carolina Victim Assistance Network (SCVAN), in a recent interview with The Nerve. “I agree that alcoholism is a disease. Then stay home.”
Hudson blasted the 170-member S.C. Legislature for failing this year to pass DUI reform measures. A Senate bill (S. 52) died in a joint House-Senate conference committee in late June.
Because this year is the second year of a two-year legislative cycle, the bill process starts at the beginning when lawmakers reconvene in January.
“It is just past time that the leaders in the state, both in the Senate and the House, take impaired driving seriously,” said Hudson, who noted her previous roles with the state affiliate of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). “They need to help law enforcement, not hinder them. And prosecutors need to hold offenders accountable.”
“Frankly, some of us still thought that even with some of the (S. 52 bill) flaws – significant flaws in the final version – the good stuff was so good that we still may have been willing to live with some new warts, even though that would have been really hard to swallow, to have new problems that our prosecutors and officers are going to have to deal with,” said Steven Burritt, the current regional MADD executive director for South Carolina, North Carolina and Tennessee, when contacted by The Nerve.
In a recent interview, S.C. Sen. Greg Hembree, R-Horry, a former longtime top prosecutor for Horry and Georgetown counties and a member of a six-member conference committee appointed to work out differences between the House and Senate versions of S. 52, said he hopes a new reform bill can quickly move out of the Senate next year.
But Hembree, who is the Senate Education Committee chairman, added that “there certainly wasn’t the urgency in the House” this year to pass the bill, which was sponsored by Sen. Tom Davis, R-Beaufort, an attorney and the Senate Labor, Commerce and Industry Committee chairman.
“I do believe that there has been a kind of culture that has evolved around DUI that it’s not taken as seriously as it should,” said Hembree, who was the 15th Circuit solicitor from 1999-2012, contending that defense-friendly requirements in the current “Swiss cheese” DUI statute initially “demoralized law enforcement and prosecutors up and down the system.”
“The reality in other states is that … they have a lot more convictions because there aren’t as many nuances and loopholes and exceptions,” said Lisa Catalanotto, an attorney and executive director of the S.C. Commission on Prosecution Coordination, which is a state agency, in a recent interview.
“All of us want a fair law,” said veteran Upstate DUI lawyer Stan Overby, who is a member of the South Carolina Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and serves on its legislative committee, when contacted by The Nerve. “We have different definitions of fair, but at the same time, we want a fair law.”
Overby, who noted he spent 10 years handling DUI cases as a South Carolina prosecutor, said a main problem with the current system is that officers who don’t always follow state law when making drunken driving arrests are “pumping a whole bunch of bad cases into the system,” which often are handled by younger, inexperienced prosecutors.
Overby, a partner in the Cole law firm, which has offices in Anderson and Greenville, also cited several factors that he contended affect DUI death rates in South Carolina, including motorists who have to drive long distances in a primarily rural state, pothole-riddled roads statewide, and tourists “who are encouraged to drink in this state.”
How drunken driving cases are handled
In South Carolina, most drunken drivers who don’t kill or seriously injure someone can face one of two types of charges:
- DUI, which can include alcohol concentration results from breath or blood tests – though chemical tests aren't required to prove the charge – as well as other evidence, such as an officer’s observations of erratic driving and field sobriety tests. Prosecutors use that evidence to prove a defendant was “materially and appreciably impaired” under the law.
- DUAC, also known as “illegal per se,” which, unlike a DUI charge, is dependent on a typical breath or blood test showing the driver had an alcohol concentration of at least .08%. The Nerve’s review found that far fewer drivers are charged with DUAC compared to DUI.
State law prevents drivers from being charged with DUI and DUAC for the same offense.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in its statistics uses an alcohol concentration level of at least .08% as its threshold for defining alcohol-impaired driving in virtually all states, including South Carolina.
Drivers under the influence of drugs or a combination of drugs and alcohol – which victim advocates, law enforcement agencies and prosecutors say have become more prevalent in South Carolina in recent years – can be prosecuted under DUI statutes. If drivers suspected of being under the influence of alcohol and drugs meet the .08% alcohol-concentration threshold, they can be charged with DUAC without legal consideration of any drug impairment.
In drunken driving cases, the penalties for DUI and DUAC convictions are the same, which are based on the level of alcohol concentration – where applicable – and the number of repeat offenses. At the lowest, first-offense level, the penalty is $400 or 48 hours to 30 days in jail, though community service is allowed in lieu of jail time, for alcohol concentration levels below .10% or if breath tests were refused. At the highest tier, the penalty is to three years to seven years in prison for convictions of fourth or subsequent offenses at alcohol concentration levels of at least .16%.
Prior offenses include convictions by guilty verdicts, guilty or no contest pleas, or bail forfeitures for drunken driving violations under South Carolina laws or ordinances, or comparable laws or ordinances in other states or their municipalities. Only violations that occurred within 10 years of the date of the latest offense can count as prior offenses.
Penalties for felony DUI causing great bodily injury range from a minimum 30 days in jail to 15 years in prison and a fine of $5,100 to $10,100. Great bodily injury is defined as an injury that “creates a substantial risk of death or which causes serious, permanent disfigurement, or protracted loss or impairment of the function of any bodily member or organ.”
Felony DUI causing death carries a prison sentence of one year to 25 years in prison and a fine ranging from $10,100 to $25,100.
Under felony DUI laws, prosecutors must prove that the defendant did “any act forbidden by law” or neglected “any duty imposed by law” while driving impaired, which “proximately” caused “great bodily injury or death to another person.”
Besides fines, convicted drunken drivers face other types of costs, including court assessments and surcharges, required ignition interlock installation and leasing fees, and mandated alcohol education and treatment programs – all of which can add up to hundreds or thousands of dollars. In addition, convicted drivers must carry high-risk, “SR-22” insurance for three years, which typically costs thousands of dollars more over the period compared to policies for drivers with clean records.
In South Carolina, many first-offense misdemeanor DUI and DUAC cases are handled in magistrate or municipal courts, which made up the vast majority of cases in The Nerve’s review. Higher-level circuit courts, which are grouped into 16 circuits statewide, can handle second- and subsequent-offense cases, which carry stiffer penalties, in addition to having jurisdiction over felony DUI cases involving great bodily injury or death.
Based on prior court rulings, police officers can act as prosecutors in misdemeanor cases in county magistrate or municipal courts in South Carolina. Critics claim, given that officers typically are not attorneys, they often are no match for experienced criminal defense lawyers in cases before magistrate or municipal judges, who, by law, don’t have to be attorneys, though they have to meet specified judicial qualification and certification requirements.
Under the state's “implied consent” law, drivers are presumed to consent to chemical testing if arrested for DUI or DUAC, with arresting officers generally required to offer breath tests first before deciding whether to seek urine (as allowed by law if the officer has "reasonable suspicion" of drug impairment) or blood tests. But drivers have the legal right to refuse chemical tests if asked to take them, as well as field sobriety tests, though refusing to take chemical tests can be used against defendants in their criminal cases, provided that they were properly advised of their implied-consent rights.
If arrested drivers submit to a breath test – typically done at jails – they have the right to obtain independent blood or urine tests at their expense, with required help from the arresting officer in finding an alternative testing facility. Failure by the officer to provide “affirmative assistance” bars admission of the breath-test results in criminal or administrative proceedings.
Drivers who refuse a breath test will have their driver’s licenses automatically suspended for six months if they didn’t have any prior offenses or suspensions within the past 10 years, with the suspension period escalating to 15 months for a fourth or subsequent refusal to take the breath test. Separately, drivers who take the test and whose alcohol concentration is at least .15% face suspensions ranging from one month to four months, depending on their offense history.
Charged drivers can contest their license suspensions within 30 days of the suspension notice through an administrative hearing with the S.C. Office of Motor Vehicle Hearings, which is part of the S.C. Administrative Law Court; and either request a temporary alcohol license, which generally allows unrestricted driving while a hearing is pending, or enroll in an ignition interlock program run by state Department of Motor Vehicles.
If the suspension is upheld, drivers have to comply with applicable ignition interlock and alcohol-treatment program requirements.
State law generally requires police to video record field sobriety tests, Miranda warnings and breath tests typically given at jails. Recordings must be preserved until the conclusion of the legal proceedings, and defendants are allowed to have access to recordings in their respective cases.
Police, prosecutors and victim advocates often blame the suppression of evidence or dismissal of charges on what they describe as the state’s strict video requirements – which they contend typically were pushed by criminal defense lawyers in the Legislature.
Many dismissals, plea bargains
Following is a breakdown by the state’s 16 judicial circuits of 17,770 dismissed first-offense, lowest-level DUI cases, including expunged charges, by prosecutors or police officers acting as prosecutors over the seven-fiscal-year period, The Nerve’s review found:
- 1st Circuit (Calhoun, Dorchester, Orangeburg counties): 462
- 2nd Circuit (Aiken, Bamberg, Barnwell counties): 623
- 3rd Circuit (Clarendon, Lee, Sumter, Williamsburg counties): 615
- 4th Circuit (Chesterfield, Darlington, Dillon, Marlboro counties): 555
- 5th Circuit (Kershaw, Richland counties): 1,977
- 6th Circuit (Chester, Fairfield, Lancaster counties): 558
- 7th Circuit (Cherokee, Spartanburg counties): 823
- 8th Circuit (Abbeville, Greenwood, Laurens, Newberry counties): 1,140
- 9th Circuit (Berkeley, Charleston counties): 1,535
- 10th Circuit (Anderson, Oconee counties): 1,539
- 11th Circuit (Edgefield, Lexington, McCormick, Saluda counties): 1,408
- 12th Circuit (Florence, Marion counties): 264
- 13th Circuit (Greenville, Pickens counties): 485
- 14th Circuit (Allendale, Beaufort, Colleton, Hampton, Jasper counties): 1,278
- 15th Circuit (Georgetown, Horry counties): 3,186
- 16th Circuit (Union, York counties): 1,322
And those numbers likely are an undercount. In a written response in September 2025 following initial releases of drunken driving data to The Nerve, the Office of Court Administration provided a list of 138 municipal courts statewide that it said were not part of its internal records system, referred to as the "case management system” (CMS), noting it could not provide data for those courts.
That list included courts in larger counties such as Charleston, Greenville, Horry, Lexington, Richland, Spartanburg and York. The office provided a separate list of 65 municipal courts in its CMS.
Victim advocates, prosecutors and defense attorneys generally agree that police officers should not act as prosecutors in misdemeanor DUI or DUAC cases, though some point out a significant increase in state funding would be needed to add prosecutors to handle DUI cases in all magistrate or municipal courts – particularly in the state’s rural areas.
Seventh Circuit Solicitor Barry Barnette, who has been the circuit’s top prosecutor since 2011 and joined the office in 1991, told The Nerve that he has prosecutors in both Spartanburg and Cherokee counties handling DUI cases in magistrate courts – typically arrests made by state troopers and others handled by sheriff’s deputies if they request help. But he acknowledged that there are “other parts of the state where they don’t have the resources.”
DUI defense attorney Overby, who noted that his wife is a prosecutor, contended that after getting experience in DUI cases, underpaid prosecutors often quit to practice DUI defense law.
“At some point, it becomes more economically beneficial to switch sides than it is to serve the community that you were in,” he said.
The Nerve’s review also found that a total of 1,089 listed second- and subsequent-offense DUI and DUAC charges involving 1,072 defendants over the seven-year period were pleaded down to first offenses – including 117 third- and fourth- or subsequent-offense charges reduced to first-offense charges. Following is a breakdown of the total number of listed guilty pleas to lesser charges among the state’s 16 judicial circuits:
- 1st Circuit (Calhoun, Dorchester, Orangeburg counties): 37
- 2nd Circuit (Aiken, Bamberg, Barnwell counties): 38
- 3rd Circuit (Clarendon, Lee, Sumter, Williamsburg counties): 22
- 4th Circuit (Chesterfield, Darlington, Dillon, Marlboro counties): 21
- 5th Circuit (Kershaw, Richland counties): 52
- 6th Circuit (Chester, Fairfield, Lancaster counties): 17
- 7th Circuit (Cherokee, Spartanburg counties): 86
- 8th Circuit (Abbeville, Greenwood, Laurens, Newberry counties): 102
- 9th Circuit (Berkeley, Charleston counties): 156
- 10th Circuit (Anderson, Oconee counties): 7
- 11th Circuit (Edgefield, Lexington, McCormick, Saluda counties): 94
- 12th Circuit (Florence, Marion counties): 30
- 13th Circuit (Greenville, Pickens counties): 73
- 14th Circuit (Allendale, Beaufort, Colleton, Hampton, Jasper counties): 30
- 15th Circuit (Georgetown, Horry counties): 172
- 16th Circuit (Union, York counties): 152
Hudson, the executive director of the South Carolina Victim Assistance Network, said her organization opposes plea bargaining DUI and DUAC charges down by more than one level.
Short prison sentences
For the most serious charge of felony DUI causing death, which carries a sentence of one year to 25 years in prison, prosecutors statewide collectively obtained 177 guilty pleas and four guilty verdicts, or about 69%, of the total 263 charges over the seven-year period in The Nerve’s review.
Prosecutors dropped at least 56, or about 21%, of the total charges. The remainder of the charges were dismissed for other reasons.
Although felony DUI causing death carries a maximum 25-year sentence, court and S.C. Department of Corrections (SCDOC) records show that 104 charges, or about 58% of the total 180 charges with final dispositions, resulted in sentences of 12 years or less, with 28 charges resulting in 10-year sentences – the single-largest category among those cases.
One-year sentences – the minimum penalty for that charge – were given to at least five defendants, according to court and SCDOC records. At the other end of the spectrum, 16 of those charges, or about 9% of the total, resulted in the maximum 25 years for a collective eight defendants, with four defendants pleading guilty to charges involving multiple deaths stemming from one crash.
Under state law, defendants sentenced for crimes that carry maximum sentences of at least 20 years, including felony DUI causing death, generally are eligible for release after serving 85% of their sentences if they had no disciplinary infractions. Those offenses are legally classified as “no parole” crimes.
“We tried years ago to do truth-in-sentencing,” said Hudson, referring to a requirement for defendants to serve full sentences for serious crimes. “And one of my (S.C.) House members said, ‘We really need to call it ‘almost truth-in-sentencing.’”
The Nerve’s review also found that at least 29 defendants with fatal DUI charges dismissed by prosecutors pleaded guilty to lesser charges, including 21 charges of reckless vehicular homicide, which carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence, though none of those defendants received 10 years. And five defendants who pleaded guilty to reckless homicide were given suspended prison sentences and instead received probation ranging from two to five years.
Victim advocates believe felony DUI cases need to be taken more seriously in the criminal justice system.
Hudson said she remembers 15 years ago when judicial reforms were being discussed in the Legislature, a focus group of crime victims was asked what offenses they believe should be considered violent.
“They said, ‘Anything that kills a human being,’” she recalled.
For David Longstreet, whose daughter, Emma, was killed nearly 15 years ago by a drunken driver, the emotional toll of losing a child doesn’t go away.
“She would have been 21 this year,” he said.
Nerve interns Laura Anne Kay and Max White contributed to this story. Brundrett is the news editor of The Nerve (www.thenerve.org). Contact him at 803-394-8273 or
