Spartanburg County
Guilty
65%
10%
Pled Down
D/D/NG
24%
n=524
For the 524 cases with final outcomes we monitored in Spartanburg County, 343 were found guilty, 53 were pled down to a lesser charge, and 128 were dismissed, dropped, found not guilty or disappeared from the public index for unknown reasons.
A Comparison of Results to Past Reports
This is the fourth MADD South Carolina report where we have shared conviction rates by county, but we will focus here on changes we have seen compared to the report released in December 2020, which represented case data from 2016 to summer 2020. Charleston, Horry, and Spartanburg Counties had the least changes in their dispositions, which is of note in part because it could be expected that the COVID-19 court closings might have had more of an impact on rates in some way. Compared to 2020, Lexington County had a slight decrease (four percentage points) in their conviction rate but had a much higher ratio of cases that were dropped, dismissed, or found not guilty relative to those that were pled down (5% and 49% in 2020 report). Lexington is one of the newer counties we monitor, and we have seen larger shifts between the first two reports when it is a newer county in our program. Berkeley County had a conviction rate that was seven percentage points higher (42%) in the 2020 report. The percentages of cases pled down went up eight percentage points. Greenville and Richland Counties had the most notable shifts in results since the last report. Greenville’s conviction rate had been 47% in the last report, 2 4 percentage points lower than this report shows. In discussions with our local stakeholders, there were two primary theories for this shift. One is that the thorough handing of magistrate- level cases by the 13 th Circuit Solicitor’s Office may in fact be leading to better results as of late. Second is that a substantial percentage of the cases that reached resolution during the COVID court closures were ones where the prosecution had a strong case
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