J. C. Nicholson

Last updated
J. C. Nicholson
Born1942 (age 81–82)
Birmingham, Alabama
NationalityAmerican
Education The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina
Alma mater University of South Carolina School of Law
Occupation Judge
Years active1973–present
Employer South Carolina Circuit Court
ChildrenFour, including South Carolina Assistant Attorney General J.C. Nicholson III
Parent(s)Frances E. and Julius Carnes Nicholson Sr.

Julius Carnes "J. C." Nicholson Jr. (born 1942) is an American judge who sits on the South Carolina Circuit Court.

Contents

Early life

Nicholson was born in Birmingham, Alabama, to parents Frances E. and Julius Carnes Nicholson Sr. [1] He grew up in Camden, South Carolina. [2] After attending The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina, he entered the United States Air Force, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. [3] He spent four years in the Air Force, and went on to the University of South Carolina School of Law. [2]

Career

Nicholson started his legal career as Assistant Solicitor for Orangeburg County, South Carolina. From 1973 to 1974 he served in that position full-time, while from 1974 to 1976 he reduced his hours to part-time while also working in private practice. In 1976 he was elected a member of the county council for Orangeburg County, in which position he continued until 1982. From 1983 to 1984 he was Assistant Solicitor for Greenville County. He then returned to private practice at Epps and Krause, where he became a partner in 1986. He was elected as a circuit court judge in 1999. [1] He retired officially in 2009; however, after retirement, he continued to work for the court system as a part-time circuit judge. He stated in a newspaper interview at the time, "I am 66. It's time to slow down. But I don't think you can go from doing this full-time to suddenly just stopping altogether." [2]

Major cases and rulings

Stand-your-ground law and domestic violence

Nicholson received widespread notice for his ruling in State v. Jones, a case in which a woman was charged with the murder of her boyfriend. In November 2012, the couple had a dispute at their shared residence; when Jones attempted to leave, her boyfriend punched her and grabbed her by the hair, and she stabbed him. In a pre-trial immunity hearing, Nicholson ruled that the state's "stand-your-ground" statute, the Protection of Property and Persons Act, gave Jones immunity for the killing of her boyfriend. The law protects the actions of a person who uses deadly force and "who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in another place where he has a right to be"; prosecutors had argued that the phrase "another place" should not include a home in which the attacker resided, but Nicholson disagreed, stating in his ruling that prosecutors' reading of the law would create a "nonsensical result" in which a person could defend him- or herself against an intimate partner's attack outside of the home but not within it. [4]

Prosecutors criticized Nicholson's ruling and indicated their intent to appeal, as it also affected two other outstanding cases. [4] Amanda Marcotte, writing in Slate , praised the ruling, stating that while she found stand-your-ground laws to be problematic, "if a state insists on having them, they should be applied evenly and fairly". [5] However, a Salon column by Jenny Kutner disagreed with Nicholson's reading of the law, noting that the "presumption of fear" required for a use of deadly force to be found lawful did not apply within the home; Kutner stated that Jones' case instead demonstrated the need for South Carolina to pass new laws which protected survivors of domestic violence. [6]

2015 Charleston church shooting

In 2015, Nicholson was assigned as presiding judge for the trial of Dylann Roof, who is charged with committing the Charleston church shooting on June 17 that year. Nicholson set Roof's trial date for July 11, 2016. [7] Nicholson's gag order in the case, forbidding the release of photographs of victims and recordings of 9-1-1 calls under the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act, has been challenged by news media, while survivors and victims' families have spoken in favor of maintaining it. A hearing on the gag order will be held at an indeterminate date in the future. [8] Nicholson has also ordered Roof to provide handwriting samples to verify whether he wrote notes that "contain evidence of guilt and motive". [9]

Family

Nicholson has four children and nine grandchildren. [1] His son, Julius Carnes Nicholson III, is a lawyer with the Office of the South Carolina Attorney General. [10]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Council of Conservative Citizens</span> American white supremacist political group

The Council of Conservative Citizens is an American white supremacist organization. Founded in 1985, it advocates white nationalism, and supports some paleoconservative causes. In the organization's statement of principles, it states that they "oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Andrew Wynn</span> American judge (born 1954)

James Andrew Wynn is an American jurist. He serves as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and formerly served on both the North Carolina Court of Appeals and the North Carolina Supreme Court.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edith Jones</span> American judge (born 1949)

Edith Hollan Jones is a United States circuit judge and the former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karen J. Williams</span> American judge (1951–2013)

Karen Johnson Williams was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, appointed in 1992 and served as its Chief Judge from 2007 until her retirement in 2009. Williams was mentioned as a potential nominee to the United States Supreme Court during the administration of George W. Bush.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dennis Shedd</span> American judge (born 1953)

Dennis Wayne Shedd is a former United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Earl Carnes</span> American judge (born 1950)

Edward Earl Carnes is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

Rudolph Thomas Randa was an American judge. He was a United States district judge in the Eastern District of Wisconsin for the last 24 years of his life. He was Chief Judge of the Eastern District of Wisconsin from 2002 until October 2009. Prior to his appointment to the federal court, he was a Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge and served one year on the Wisconsin Court of Appeals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karen L. Henderson</span> American judge (born 1944)

Karen LeCraft Henderson is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert S. Lasnik</span> American judge (born 1951)

Robert Stephen Lasnik is an American attorney and jurist, who serves as a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington.

Susan Webber Wright is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Wright is a former judge on the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. She received national attention when she first dismissed the sexual harassment lawsuit brought by Paula Jones against President Bill Clinton in 1998, and then, in 1999, found Clinton to be in civil contempt of court.

Town of Mt. Pleasant v. Chimento was a South Carolina case that ruled that while poker was a game of skill, the Dominant Factor Test is not demonstrably a legal standard in South Carolina and thus poker is still subject to the laws related to gambling. The case was later appealed to a higher South Carolina district court where the Judge overturned the trial court's convictions, stating that Dominant Factor Test was the appropriate legal standard and therefore participating in a private home poker game is not illegal, nor is it gambling. The Judge further declared sections of the 207-year-old statute unconstitutionally vague and therefore void. In 2012, the South Carolina Supreme Court upheld the statute and reinstated the convictions of the defendants.

Druanne Dykes White is an American trial lawyer based in South Carolina. She was a prosecutor for the state for more than 11 years, and was then elected to a four-year term as solicitor for the Tenth Judicial Circuit, serving from 2000 to 2004. She has since returned to private practice.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South Carolina Circuit Court</span> U.S. state court

The South Carolina Circuit Court is the state court of general jurisdiction of the U.S. state of South Carolina. It consists of a civil division and a criminal division.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Gergel</span> American judge (born 1954)

Richard Mark Gergel is a South Carolina lawyer who serves as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina.

David Isaac Bruck is a Canadian-American criminal defense attorney, clinical professor of law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, and director of the Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse. Bruck was raised in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He attended Harvard College and University of South Carolina School of Law. He has co-represented high profile defendants, including Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Dylann Roof, and Susan Smith.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charleston church shooting</span> 2015 mass shooter attack at African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina

The Charleston church shooting, also known as the Charleston church massacre, was an anti-black mass shooting and hate crime that occurred on June 17, 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina. Nine people were killed, and a tenth was injured, during a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest black church in the southern United States. Among the fatalities was the senior pastor, state senator Clementa C. Pinckney. All ten victims were African Americans. At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting at a place of worship in U.S. history and is the deadliest mass shooting in South Carolina history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church</span> Historic church in South Carolina, United States

Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, colloquially Mother Emanuel, is a church in Charleston, South Carolina, founded in 1817. It is the oldest AME church in the Southern United States; founded the previous year in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, AME was the first independent black denomination in the nation. Mother Emanuel has one of the oldest black congregations south of Baltimore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dylann Roof</span> American mass murderer (born 1994)

Dylann Storm Roof is an American white supremacist, Neo-Nazi, and mass murderer who is currently serving time on death row at USP Terre Haute for perpetrating the Charleston church shooting on June 17, 2015, in the U.S. state of South Carolina. During a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Roof killed nine people, all African Americans, including senior pastor and state senator Clementa C. Pinckney, and injured a tenth person. After several people identified Roof as the main suspect, he became the center of a manhunt that ended the morning after the shooting with his arrest in Shelby, North Carolina. He later confessed that he committed the shooting in hopes of igniting a race war. Roof's actions in Charleston have been widely described as domestic terrorism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trial of Dylann Roof</span> 2016 murder trial in South Carolina, United States

United States v. Roof F. Supp. 3d 419(D.S.C. 2016) was a 2017 federal trial involving mass murderer Dylann Roof and his role in the Charleston church shooting in 2015. Five days after the shooting, Roof was indicted on 33 federal charges, including 12 counts of committing a hate crime against black victims. On May 24, 2016, the Justice Department announced that Roof would face the death penalty. As he was already facing the death penalty in his state trial, Roof became the first person in U.S. history to face both a federal and state death penalty at the same time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julius N. Richardson</span> American judge (born 1976)

Julius Ness "Jay" Richardson is an American judge and lawyer who serves as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He was formerly an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of South Carolina.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Judge J. C. Nicholson, Jr". South Carolina Judicial Department. Archived from the original on August 24, 2014. Retrieved July 30, 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 Smith-Miles, Charmaine (February 9, 2009). "Time on the bench: Judge J.C. 'Buddy' Nicholson to retire in July". Independent Mail. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved July 30, 2015.
  3. ↑ Battles, Bess (December 8, 2008). "Direct Examination: Q & A interview with Judge Buddy Nicholson". South Carolina Lawyers Weekly. Retrieved July 30, 2015.
  4. 1 2 Knapp, Andrew (October 12, 2014). "Charleston prosecutors challenge use of 'stand your ground' law in domestic disputes at home". The Post and Courier.
  5. ↑ Marcotte, Amanda (October 15, 2014). "South Carolina Says 'Stand Your Ground' Law Doesn't Apply to Abused Women". Slate XX Factor. Retrieved July 30, 2015.
  6. ↑ Kutner, Jenny (October 15, 2014). "Stand whose ground? How a criminal loophole gives domestic abusers all the rights". Salon. Retrieved July 30, 2015.
  7. ↑ McLeod, Harriet (July 16, 2015). "South Carolina judge extends order sealing church massacre documents". Reuters. Retrieved July 31, 2015.
  8. ↑ Knapp, Andrew (July 30, 2015). "Seven groups expected to pose arguments on gag order in Dylann Roof case". The Post and Courier. Retrieved July 31, 2015.
  9. ↑ "Accused gunman Dylann Roof to provide handwriting samples". News 13. Associated Press. 20 July 2015. Retrieved 7 August 2015.
  10. ↑ "Engagements: Truitt-Nicholson". Independent Mail. March 22, 2008. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved July 30, 2015.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.