SCLAWYERSWEEKLY.COM VOLUME 19 NUMBER 22 ■
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OCTOBER 25, 2021 ■ $8.50
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FROM THE BRINK Transparency, reinvestment spark Charleston School of Law’s comeback story ■ BY TERI ERRICO GRIFFIS Dean Larry Cunningham was full of apologies after running a few minutes late to a meeting. A group of Charleston School of Law students had surprised him last-minute by dropping off a handful of handwritten thank you cards, expressing their appreciation for his support volunteering at a recent event. The bubbly moment was a far cry from where the law school was seven years earlier, on the brink of disaster and on its way to permanently shuttering. Back then, school administrators were far more likely to be receiving correspondence related to two lawsuits filed by faculty members than thank-you notes from students. The hiccup in the school’s history began in 2013 when owners Robert Carr and George Kosko called an impromptu gathering of faculty to inform them that that the school would either have to close or be sold to InfiLaw, a Floridabased for-profit company that owned three bottom-tier law schools, including Charlotte School of Law. The school was only 10 years old at that time. This newspaper called it “a law school on the brink,” which it very much was. But devastated but determined students, alumni, and faculty pushed back, fearing that the sale would mar the school’s reputation and lower the standards of a Charleston School of Law education. The turning point came in October 2015 when Ed Bell, See CSOL Page 5 ►
Failure to call alibi witnesses was ineffective assistance ■ BY HEATH HAMACHER hhamacher@sclawyersweekly.com A man who spent nearly a decade in prison after being a convicted of several violent crimes will get a new trial because his trial lawyer declined to call alibi witnesses that could have called his guilt into question, the South Carolina Court of Appeals has unanimously ruled. The attorney who represented
Victor Weldon during his 2012 trial—a real estate attorney who said he’s tried one or two criminal cases in more than 20 years of practicing law—testified at a post-conviction relief (PCR) hearing that he didn’t know why he didn’t call Weldon’s mother and sister as alibi witnesses, and that the outcome may have been different had he done so. In hindsight, he said, he should have. Instead, the trial attorney attacked
the DNA evidence linking Weldon to the crimes. The argument didn’t persuade the jury, and Weldon was convicted of first-degree burglary, armed robbery, grand larceny, kidnapping, and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime when he and two other men allegedly assaulted and robbed the victim in his own garage. Weldon was sentenced to consecutive 30-year sentences, a concurrent 20-year-sentence, and two
concurrent five-year sentences. The PCR court determined that despite trial counsel’s change of heart, he had made clear, tactical, strategic decisions during the trial and was at least reasonably competent. But in its Oct. 6 decision, hearing the case on a petition for a writ of certiorari, the appeals court overturned the PCR court’s denial of relief, finding that See Alibi Page 7 ►
INSIDE VERDICTS & SETTLEMENTS
VERDICTS & SETTLEMENTS
SIDEBAR
Bars to pay $5.5M in dram shop settlements
Parents of man slain in hotel settle suit for $1.25M
All doughnut hole and no doughnuts
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