Fifth Circuit Solicitor Byron Gipson attends a Statehouse hearing Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026, on impeachment efforts against him, proposed by members of the ultra-right wing House Freedom Caucus. (Photo by Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — A hardline faction of the state House’s GOP supermajority wants to impeach the Democratic chief prosecutor for two Midlands counties. It’s unclear whether legislators even have that authority.
So, a House Judiciary panel voted Tuesday to find out.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus accuse 5th Circuit Solicitor Byron Gipson of misconduct in office and breach of the public trust over the handling of a pair of headline-grabbing murder cases over the past three years. Voters of Richland and Kershaw counties first elected him in 2018. He faces re-election in November.
Can the General Assembly impeach an elected solicitor? The House panel voted 3-2 along party lines to hire attorney Walt Wilkins, the retired, longtime solicitor of Greenville and Pickens counties. He’s also the former U.S. attorney for South Carolina under President George W. Bush.
But first, the full House Judiciary Committee must agree. How much the query would cost is unknown. There’s also no timeline for how long it could take.
Rep. Jordan Pace, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, said his resolution calling for Gipson’s impeachment stems from a December 2022 deal that cut 16 years off the sentence of a convicted murderer.
Jeroid Price, now 45, was sentenced to prison in 2003 for fatally shooting 22-year-old Carl Smalls Jr. at a Columbia nightclub the year prior. The alleged Bloods gang member was released under the deal negotiated in secret between Gipson and defense attorney Todd Rutherford, who’s also the House Democratic leader.
The state Supreme Court overturned the early release deal four months later, spurring a monthslong manhunt. Police and FBI agents arrested Price in New York and sent him back to prison in South Carolina, where he continues to serve the remainder of his 35-year sentence
The bargain drew condemnation from law enforcement and the victim’s family, who learned of the move just hours before Price was freed. At the time, Rutherford said Price’s sentence was reduced because he had assisted officers in prison.
Smalls’ father told The Post and Courier it was a prison worker, not the solicitor’s office, who tipped off his family. He said he and his wife felt “like our son was being murdered all over again.”
The Smalls family supports Pace’s effort.
“Our family was wronged by the solicitor, and we were willing to lend our voice in any effort to have him impeached,” they wrote in a letter to legislators dated Tuesday.
Father of slain 22-year-old wants federal prosecutors to handle daughter’s murder case
Democrats on the panel questioned the timing of Pace’s proposal, a full three years after the judge signed the release deal. The Goose Creek Republican filed the legislation in December.
That followed a separate, front-page murder case months earlier — that of slain 22-year-old Logan Federico.
Federico, of Waxhaw, North Carolina, was fatally shot in a downtown Columbia neighborhood while visiting with friends at the University of South Carolina. Her grieving parents didn’t speak but were in the crowd for the Tuesday legislative hearing.
The story garnered national attention following father Steve Federico’s recounting of the crime during a Sept. 29, 2025, satellite hearing of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on Oversight in Charlotte on victims of violent crime.
If not for record keeping mistakes and plea deals that led to lighter sentencing, Steve Federico believes, the man accused of murdering his daughter likely would have still been in prison.
He wants prosecutors to pursue the death penalty, the only punishment he thinks fits the charges against the accused killer, 31-year-old Alexander Dickey. He also wants to see federal prosecutors take over the case.
According to investigators, Dickey killed the young woman amid a multi-day crime spree.
The case against him is ongoing and he remains in jail without bond after his indictment June 25 on dozens of charges, including murder, burglary and possession of a weapon during a violent crime, according to Richland County court records.
While other legislators referenced the Federico case as they debated Pace’s resolution, Pace himself never mentioned it and declined to specify anything other than the Price deal.
The head of the commission that oversees prosecutors in the state called the impeachment effort launched against Gipson “unprecedented,” “unconstitutional,” and one that “runs the very real risk of trying to turn the justice system into a popularity contest.”
Only statewide elected officers and judicial officials are subject to impeachment, said Duffie Stone, who’s also solicitor for the 14th Circuit, which spans Allendale, Beaufort, Colleton, Hampton and Jasper counties.
Stone, a Republican, went on to tell the story of a late 2000s case he faced as a newly elected solicitor covering the state’s southernmost counties.
A drunken driver hit and killed a 17-year-old high school soccer star who was driving his friends on prom night in Bluffton. The initial suspect was in the country illegally. But DNA testing of empty beer cans in the car later showed the man arrested was not among those drinking.
When Stone told the family what the investigation showed, he said they understood the situation.
“The community, however, did not. I had plenty of people saying, ‘I will never support Duffie Stone again because he didn’t prosecute that illegal immigrant,'” he said. “They didn’t know the facts. They didn’t know anything underlying the issue. But they knew somebody particularly unpopular was in court and they wanted me to prosecute him regardless.”
Stone also spoke against a separate bill that sought to create a legislative review committee for solicitors.
Those reviews are already handled by the commission he chairs, he said. He also noted there’s additional oversight by a crime victim ombudsman in the state attorney general’s office as well as the judicial branch’s disciplinary office.
Without naming names, Stone accused political candidates of “trying to score political points under the guise of standing up for crime victims.
“I look at mothers who have lost their children and I look at fathers who have lost children, and I have to tell them the tough things,” he said. “There’s a difference from standing up for victims and exploiting them.”
U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman, who’s running for governor, was the first in October to publicly call for the impeachment of Gipson, whom the Federicos accused of failing to communicate with them after their daughter’s death.
Pace filed his bill about two months later.
Norman, a member of the U.S. House Freedom Caucus who helped launch the state affiliate, renewed those calls last week.
“This guy needs to go,” he said in a campaign email. “The legislature is more than happy to vote in liberal judges, how about they vote out soft-on-crime solicitors for once.”
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, another Republican running for governor, joined in the impeachment calls Tuesday.
“Logan Federico should be alive today,” Mace said in a statement. “Her murder was entirely preventable. When prosecutors fail to do their jobs, when dangerous criminals with decades of charges walk free because of missing paperwork and soft-on-crime policies, South Carolinians pay the price with their lives.”
But it was Lexington County prosecutors in a Republican solicitor’s office, not Gipson’s, who cut the plea deal years ago that allowed Dickey to be released for time served on a lower-level offense despite having previous convictions on his record.
“This is a perfect example of Washington, D.C., style politics invading the people’s house in South Carolina, and South Carolina does not need to be going that direction,” said state Rep. Justin Bamberg.
The Bamberg Democrat and Rep. Spencer Wetmore, D-Folly Beach, were the two legislators who voted “no” on Tuesday.
The three “yes” votes came from Pace and Reps. Cody Mitchell of Hartsville and Weston Newton of Bluffton, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee that will next take up the resolution.
As for Gipson, he has pushed back against early pressure from state Attorney General Alan Wilson to pursue the death penalty.
Wilson, another Republican running for governor, suggested in October that he’d take over if the solicitor didn’t decide soon. In response, Gipson contended making that determination so early in the case “would set a dangerous precedent.”
Wilson ultimately assigned a senior attorney in his office’s death penalty division to aid Gipson’s review.
On Tuesday, Federico told the SC Daily Gazette he’s still waiting on Gipson to decide whether he’ll pursue the death penalty. He said the family met with Gipson’s team in November.
Murder cases often take years to prosecute.
In the past year, Gipson’s office closed out about 20 murder charges. The oldest case dated back to 2020. Prosecutors secured three guilty verdicts and two guilty pleas. The remainder were dismissed, according to Richland County court records. Over the same time period, more than 70 new murder charges were filed.
Gipson, who will be up for reelection come November should he choose to run again, said in a Tuesday statement he will cooperate with any inquiry.
“I have dedicated my professional life to the pursuit of justice and to protecting the communities I serve,” he said. “At the center of this work is a clear responsibility: securing justice, protecting public safety, and holding offenders accountable. That focus guides every decision made by this office.”
“It is equally important to be clear about what is at stake. The independence of prosecutors is a cornerstone of our system of government,” he added. “Any effort that weakens that independence risks undermining the very structure that protects the fairness and integrity of our courts.”
Courtesy of South Carolina Daily Gazette
