Charlie Condon | |
---|---|
49th Attorney General of South Carolina | |
In office January 15, 1995 –January 15, 2003 | |
Governor | David Beasley Jim Hodges |
Preceded by | Thomas Medlock |
Succeeded by | Henry McMaster |
Personal details | |
Born | Charles Molony Condon Charleston,South Carolina,U.S. |
Political party | Republican |
Spouse | Emily Condon |
Alma mater | University of Notre Dame (B.A.) Duke University (J.D.) |
Profession | Attorney |
Charles Molony Condon,known as Charlie Condon (born c. 1953),is a former Attorney General of the U.S. state of South Carolina. For part of his term,he concurrently served as the first chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association. Condon is also a former Ninth Circuit solicitor (1980-1991);when he was elected to the position at the age of 27,he became the youngest solicitor in the history of South Carolina. In 2008,he was the chairman of John McCain's presidential campaign in South Carolina. He currently is an attorney in private practice in Mt. Pleasant outside his native Charleston,South Carolina.
Condon was first elected attorney general in 1994. In his reelection in 1998,he defeated,54-46 percent,the Democratic nominee,lawyer Tom Turnipseed,of the capital city of Columbia.
University of Notre Dame in South Bend,Indiana,Bachelor of Arts,1975, magna cum laude
While attorney general,Condon directed all prosecutors to follow a no-drop policy in domestic violence-related cases,even if victims are reluctant to press charges. [1] (He also successfully pushed) The victims' bill of rights,. . . (which),would require that crime victims be treated "with fairness,respect and dignity." Prosecutors would have to tell crime victims about changes in their cases and give them access to case records after investigation are closed. Judges would ensure the mandates were followed. [2]
Condon announced as the first chairman of the association,that the members would act as a policy organization to promote Republican ideas of limited government,crime fighting,and individual responsibility.
Asked about the new activism by many attorneys general,Mr. Condon,though cautioning that he could not speak for all Republicans in the post,said the line between the legislature and a state's chief legal executive had to be carefully drawn. Pointing to the national battle over teen-age smoking as an example,he said,'I think everyone has his role,and in terms of limited government the idea of what should and shouldn't be done through the legislature rather thanthrough the judicial branch raises some serious questions.'" [3]
In 2001,Attorney General Condon declared an open season on home invaders. He mandated that,"citizens' defending their home against invasion should not be arrested,charged or prosecuted." [4] "The message needs to be sent loudly and clearly that the state is going to back the homeowner if their home is invaded," he said in an interview. "I'm putting home invaders on notice that if an occupant chooses to use deadly force,there will be no prosecution."But Mr. Condon said he was tired of seeing homeowners who defended their homes dragged through lengthy investigations and trials before being cleared,when it was obvious to him that they did nothing wrong.
"You don't want to put the homeowner in the position of saying,'If I use deadly force,I might be cleared after a trial,'" Mr. Condon said. "That's tantamount to saying that people have rights,but there's a huge cross attached to it. Most courts have a laissez-faire attitude about these things,figuring that everything will come out fine after a trial. But I think we need to send the message that the home is sacred ground,period." [5]
While serving as Attorney General for South Carolina,Condon argued as respondent in the case Reno v. Condon . Congress enacted the Driver's Privacy Protection Act of 1994 (DPPA),which establishes a regulatory scheme that restricts the States' ability to disclose a driver's personal information without the driver's consent,after finding that many States sell such information. The DPPA conflicts with South Carolina law,under which information contained in the State's DMV records is available to any person or entity that fills out a form listing the requester's name and address and stating that the information will not be used for telephone solicitation. The Attorney General of South Carolina filed suit,alleging the DPPA violated the Tenth and Eleventh Amendments. After success in District court and Appeals Court,the suit wound up in front of the Supreme Court. Condon was successful in the Appeals Court which ruled that Congress was stepping illegally into state territory and noted further that there exists no constitutional right to privacy in information contained in public records. South Carolina Attorney General Charlie Condon,when hearing that the Supreme Court agreement to hear the case,said he believed citizens have a right to keep their privacy protected—which he says is guaranteed by a clause in the South Carolina Constitution. But the real question is who should be enforcing that protection Condon said. Condon and other state officials strongly believe that states should have full autonomy when it comes to administering public records. In the case before the Supreme Court,South Carolina will argue that the new federal law violates the 10th Amendment. [6]
"The people of Carolina established drivers' records,maintained them,and have a right to determine their use," he said in a statement. "South Carolina should be run by South Carolinians. If the federal government can tell us what to do with these records,it can tell us we can't keep records at all. The 10th Amendment is the legal and spiritual guardian of state rights. Washington,D.C.,is a long way from South Carolina,and the federal government needs to keep its distance." [7]
Condon's appearance was received by the Court as political,and his position garnered a lively and entertaining round of questions from the more liberal members of the Court. [8]
Whitner vs. State of South Carolina,328 S.C.1,492 S.E. 2d 771(1997)
State ex rel Condon vs. Hodges,349 S.C. 232,562 S.E. 2d 623 (2002)
Condon is a private practice attorney in Mt. Pleasant,South Carolina. He specializes in the areas of Criminal Defense;Criminal Law;White Collar Crime;Drug Crimes;Juvenile Criminal Law;Personal Injury;Workers' Compensation;Automobile Accidents and Injuries;Wrongful Death;Government Relations;Government;Litigation;Administrative Law;Guardianship and Conservatorship;Workers Compensation;Professional Licensing.
The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. It prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and sets requirements for issuing warrants: warrants must be issued by a judge or magistrate, justified by probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and must particularly describe the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.
Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires U.S. states to provide attorneys to criminal defendants who are unable to afford their own. The case extended the right to counsel, which had been found under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to impose requirements on the federal government, by imposing those requirements upon the states as well.
Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that U.S. state laws criminalizing sodomy between consenting adults are unconstitutional. The Court reaffirmed the concept of a "right to privacy" that earlier cases had found the U.S. Constitution provides, even though it is not explicitly enumerated. It based its ruling on the notions of personal autonomy to define one's own relationships and of American traditions of non-interference with any or all forms of private sexual activities between consenting adults.
Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that upheld, in a 5–4 ruling, the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law criminalizing oral and anal sex in private between consenting adults, in this case with respect to homosexual sodomy, though the law did not differentiate between homosexual and heterosexual sodomy. It was overturned in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), though the statute had already been struck down by the Georgia Supreme Court in 1998.
Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 (1969), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that helped to establish an implied "right to privacy" in U.S. law in the form of mere possession of obscene materials.
A rape shield law is a law that limits the ability to introduce evidence about the past sexual activity of a complainant in a sexual assault trial, or that limits cross-examination of complainants about their past sexual behaviour in sexual assault cases. The term also refers to a law that prohibits the publication of the identity of a complainant in a sexual assault case.
Holmes v. South Carolina, 547 U.S. 319 (2006), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court involving the right of a criminal defendant to present evidence that a third party instead committed the crime. The Court vacated the rape and murder conviction in South Carolina of a man who had been denied the opportunity to present evidence of a third party's guilt, because the trial court believed the prosecutor's forensic evidence was too strong for the defendant's evidence to raise an inference of innocence. The Court ruled unanimously that this exclusion violated the right of a defendant to have a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense, because the strength of a prosecutor's case had no logical relationship to whether a defendant's evidence was too weak to be admissible.
Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469 (1975), was a United States Supreme Court case involving freedom of the press publishing public information. The Court held that both a Georgia statute prohibiting the release of a rape victim's name and its common-law privacy action counterpart were unconstitutional. The case was argued on November 11, 1974, and decided on March 3, 1975.
The Driver's Privacy Protection Act of 1994, Title XXX of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, is a United States federal statute governing the privacy and disclosure of personal information gathered by state Departments of Motor Vehicles.
Same-sex marriage has been legal in South Carolina since a federal court order took effect on November 20, 2014. Another court ruling on November 18 had ordered the state to recognize same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions. Following the 2014 ruling of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Bostic v. Schaefer, which found Virginia's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional and set precedent on every state in the circuit, one judge accepted marriage license applications from same-sex couples until the South Carolina Supreme Court, in response to a request by the Attorney General, ordered him to stop. A federal district court ruled South Carolina's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional on November 12, with implementation of that decision stayed until noon on November 20. The first same-sex wedding ceremony was held on November 19.
Reno v. Condon, 528 U.S. 141 (2000), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the Driver's Privacy Protection Act of 1994 (DPPA) against a Tenth Amendment challenge.
Marsy's Law, the California Victims' Bill of Rights Act of 2008, enacted by voters as Proposition 9 through the initiative process in the November 2008 general election, is an amendment to the state's constitution and certain penal code sections. The act protects and expands the legal rights of victims of crime to include 17 rights in the judicial process, including the right to legal standing, protection from the defendant, notification of all court proceedings, and restitution, as well as granting parole boards far greater powers to deny inmates parole. Critics allege that the law unconstitutionally restricts defendant's rights by allowing prosecutors to withhold exculpatory evidence under certain circumstances, and harms victims by restricting their rights to discovery, depositions, and interviews. Passage of this law in California led to the passage of similar laws in Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Ohio and Wisconsin, and efforts to pass similar laws in Hawaii, Iowa, Montana, Idaho, South Dakota, and Pennsylvania. In November 2017, Marsy's Law was found to be unconstitutional and void in its entirety by the Supreme Court of Montana for violating that state's procedure for amending the Montana Constitution. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reached the same conclusion as Montana under its own state constitution in 2021.
United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that installing a Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking device on a vehicle and using the device to monitor the vehicle's movements constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.
Florida v. Jardines, 569 U.S. 1 (2013), was a United States Supreme Court case which resulted in the decision that police use of a trained detection dog to sniff for narcotics on the front porch of a private home is a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and therefore, without consent, requires both probable cause and a search warrant.
In the United States, civil forfeiture is a process in which law enforcement officers take assets from people who are suspected of involvement with crime or illegal activity without necessarily charging the owners with wrongdoing. While civil procedure, as opposed to criminal procedure, generally involves a dispute between two private citizens, civil forfeiture involves a dispute between law enforcement and property such as a pile of cash or a house or a boat, such that the thing is suspected of being involved in a crime. To get back the seized property, owners must prove it was not involved in criminal activity. Sometimes it can mean a threat to seize property as well as the act of seizure itself. Civil forfeiture is not considered to be an example of a criminal justice financial obligation.
Marsy's Law for Illinois, formally called the Illinois Crime Victims' Bill of Rights, amended the 1993 Rights of Crime Victims and Witnesses Act by establishing additional protections for crime victims and their families. Voters approved the measure as a constitutional amendment on November 4, 2014. It became law in 2015.
Docusearch is an American private investigations company headquartered in Boise, Idaho. Docusearch, founded by Dan Cohn, was started in 1996. It is a subsidiary of Arcanum Investigations Inc. The company operates in all states of the US.
New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), abbreviated NYSRPA v. Bruen and also known as NYSRPA II or Bruen to distinguish it from the 2020 case, is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court related to the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. The case concerned the constitutionality of the 1911 Sullivan Act, a New York State law requiring applicants for a pistol concealed carry license to show "proper cause", or a special need distinguishable from that of the general public, in their application.
Kimmelman v. Morrison, 477 U.S. 365 (1986), was a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that clarified the relationship of the right to effective assistance of counsel under the Sixth Amendment to other constitutional rights in criminal procedure. In this case, evidence against the defendant was probably seized illegally, violating the Fourth Amendment, but he lost the chance to argue that point due to his lawyer's ineffectiveness. The prosecution argued that the defendant's attempt to make a Sixth Amendment argument via a habeas corpus petition was really a way to sneak his Fourth Amendment argument in through the back door. The Court unanimously disagreed, and held that the Fourth Amendment issue and the Sixth Amendment issue represented different constitutional values, and had different requirements for prevailing in court, and therefore were to be treated separately by rules of procedure. Therefore, the habeas corpus petition could go forward. In its opinion, the Court also gave guidance on how to apply its decisions in Stone v. Powell and Strickland v. Washington.
Minnesota v. Olson, 495 U.S. 91 (1990), is a landmark search and seizure case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. In a 7-2 decision, the court held that a person staying as a guest in the house of another had a legal expectation of privacy, and that a warrantless entry into that house to arrest the person tainted the arrest and the individual's subsequent statements.