LOCAL
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2013
THE ITEM
A3
Woman in wheelchair struck by van BY BRISTOW MARCHANT bmarchant@theitem.com A woman in a wheelchair was struck by a van on Broad Street on Saturday afternoon. The woman was apparently attempting to cross the street in front of a building in the 700 block of Broad Street across from Larkin Street when she was struck head on by a van in the northbound lane. She was transported to Tuomey Regional Medical Center by ambulance in an unknown condition. No update on the woman’s condition was avail-
able Saturday. Allen Andrews was driving an older-model Toyota van on Broad Street when he crashed into the woman in the roadway. “She just pulled out right ahead of me,” he said, and declined to discuss the crash further. William Spratley was driving north on Broad shortly before the woman was struck. “I didn’t see her, but I saw all the commotion, so I pulled over,” he said. He said the woman appeared to be bleeding from the head after the crash, but she did appear to
move before being loaded into the ambulance. Spratley said he didn’t know the woman but recognized her as frequently riding around that area of Broad Street in her wheelchair. He also expressed his sympathies with Andrews after the crash. “You don’t expect somebody to get hit by a car. You just react,” he said. “I feel sorry for both of them, her and him.” Sumter police are investigating the incident. No charges had been filed in the incident as of Saturday.
BRISTOW MARCHANT / THE ITEM
A crumpled wheelchair is seen in the northbound lane of Broad Street on Saturday after a wheelchair-bound woman was struck head on by the older model Toyota van to the left. No charges were filed in relation to the incident, and it remains under investigation.
42 defendants will challenge their convictions BY ROBERT J. BAKER bbaker@theitem.com Kevin DeWayne Isaac wants a circuit court judge to vacate his guilty plea to the 2009 death of his 17-month-old son and the 25-year prison sentence that went with it. This week, Isaac and other defendants convicted of serious crimes in the 3rd Judicial Circuit will challenge their convictions at the Sumter County Judicial Center by attacking the defense provided by their original trial attorneys. Isaac and Marketta Sharnise McCray, who is not scheduled this week, were sentenced in 2010 to 25 years and 29 years, respectively, for the death of Sincere Isaac, who died of starvation on March 2, 2009. Isaac is one of 42 defendants that have filed post-conviction relief applications that will be evaluated this week. “In South Carolina, a
post-conviction relief proceeding is a collateral attack on a criminal conviction,” according to the state Attorney General’s Office, which challenges each application on a rotating schedule in the state’s 16 judicial circuits. During a hearing, the convicted person attempts to prove that his original trial lawyer was incompetent in handling his or her case or that there were other errors to prove his trial was unfair. By South Carolina law, Isaac had just 10 days to appeal his guilty plea to a higher court. In his post-conviction relief application, Isaac claims that his former attorney, Arthur Wilder, provided “ineffective assistance of counsel, failed to investigate (his) case and denied (him) adequate formulation of performance.” State law puts the burden of proof on the applicant, the convicted defendant. Isaac will have
to show At-large Circuit Judge Jeffrey Young that had it not been for the alleged deficient conduct, he would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going to trial. A successful relief application does not automatically free a defendant, but rather provides for a new trial. Young said during post-conviction relief hearings held in March at the Sumter County Courthouse that a successful applicant can even be retried and sentenced to more time. “It doesn’t just make the charge go away,” he said. “They could’ve gotten 10 years the first time, and then have a successful post-conviction relief and be retried and get 20 years depending on what the charge calls for in the law.”
OTHERS SEEK RELIEF • Donniel Woods was found guilty by a Clarendon County jury in October 2008 of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, kidnapping and strong arm robbery and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Woods had been served with warrants for the offenses on June 29, 2007, a little more than a year after a Clarendon County woman told police she was held against her will and forced to perform oral sex in a car near the area of Tearcoat and Brogdon roads in Alcolu. • Timothy James Johnson pleaded guilty in 2011 to assault and battery with intent to kill in connection with a December 2008 shooting and kidnapping from an unrelated 2009 home invasion, receiving a 20-year prison sentence. Court records show that Johnson admitted to being present at a Robney Drive home when four shots were fired at Arthur Bennett after a fight the day before involving family members from both sides. One year later, Johnson and two other men kicked in the door of a Cannery Road home and slammed the homeowner to the floor, according to reports. The homeowner’s boyfriend later arrived and shot at the intruders, hitting Johnson once in the foot and once in the leg. His DNA was found at the scene and on a glove near the home. • Nathaniel Bradley, 61, was sentenced to 30 years after a jury found him guilty of killing 39-year-old Ernest James, whose body was found May 23, 2005, in Boyles Pond, off St.
Pauls Church Road. • Devan Jevon Dwyer, 27, was found guilty in April 2009 of attacking a 34-year-old woman and her then-boyfriend at the woman’s Silver Street home. Third Circuit Judge R. Ferrell Cothran sentenced Dwyer to 30 years in prison for two counts of assault and battery with intent to kill, armed robbery, first-degree burglary and possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime. • Mark McCoy, 45, was given a life sentence without possibility of parole in 2008 for the shooting death four years earlier of 36-year-old Donald Tyrone Pettis Jr. Police said McCoy shot Pettis in the back on Edwards Street after McCoy and another man jumped Pettis. • Randy Alan Yonson, 27, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2007 for the Sept. 11, 2005, shootings of two deputies in the parking lot of a Pinewood Road nightclub. He had faced a maximum penalty of more than 100 years in prison. • John Raleigh Nelson Jr. pleaded guilty in February 2011 to one count of committing a lewd act upon a child at the Clarendon County Courthouse, garnering a 12-year sentence. The sentence was suspended to three years, with additional stipulations for placement on the Sex Offender Registry and lifetime global positioning system ankle bracelet monitoring. Nelson, a former educator, had been arrested Dec. 22, 2009, after the mother of a then-13-year-old girl told the Clarendon County Sheriff’s Office that Nelson had forced the girl to have sex with him while the woman was at work.
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