JUSTIVE SERVED WITH JIMMY RICHARDSON (15th Circuit Solicitor) 7/27/26

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:12

All right. Poor Jimmy. I've bombarded him with how about this? What about this? Can we talk about that? Uh here he is the 15th Circuit Solicitor.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Nick says it happens to him all the time.

SPEAKER_03 0:26

I love it.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

I love seeing you guys. And yes, it does happen to me all the time.

SPEAKER_03 0:31

All right. So let's not waste any time. Maybe you can bring us up to date on what's going on with the Polys Island Community Church instead of me asking.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Yeah, well, hopefully all of those arrests, um, they're they're continuing to um uh interview people, you know, not only children out there, but uh also parents to find out the extent of it. Um that would probably include um if there was any allegations of um touching or anything like that, that would involve the um this um famil uh not family justice center, but um forensic um psychologist and police can hook everybody up over there. They they do this uh where they talk to the kids um you know if there is any touching. Right now I think all of these charges are basically based on putting children at unreasonable risk, um and they don't seem to indicate that there is any touching so far. Uh that may come up. I've seen some of the videos where people are claiming that that'll have to be investigated, uh, and you know, that would be a whole uh whole nother round of stuff.

SPEAKER_03 1:57

I I have to ask you, there was one question that, you know, there was a complaint I think back in 2022, and that child went through the re children's recovery system um center and they didn't find any evidentiary information from that interview of the child. What kind of evidence comes from a conversation with the child? That's part I didn't know. If there's no rape kit done when it actually happened, what evidence do you have?

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Yeah, um, depending on and and they are a fabulous group um full of uh medical doctors, psychologists, all of that. And if the allegations are recent enough in time, they can do those medical doctors will do a forensic test um like a rape kit. They they can do that uh there as well. But now if it's delayed reporting or something else, they may may not. But it can come in the form of um evidence that can be supported, you know, in other ways. It could be, you know, the the kid says that it happened and describes the room or um something that gives them enough for probable cause, more likely than not that a crime was committed. Um all of that uh can can certainly play in it, and we can even, depending on the child's age, that is one of the few times that we can play a forensic interview in court. Uh so all of that, you know, plays a part of it.

SPEAKER_03 3:30

Uh so some reason there was no evidence back in 2022. Will they reopen that, you think?

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Carter Weaver has said that he's going to reopen that investigation and look more into it.

SPEAKER_03 3:41

There are calls for his resignation. They feel like he's at fault somehow with this person being their probation or happened under his watch or his Ohter asking for Carter to resign? No, um certain people I saw like in comments that people say, you know, he may be at fault for the response.

SPEAKER_02 4:02

There is a big question of how this individual was allowed to continue to volunteerslash work, whatever, at a location where there's a a school on the grounds. Yes. And they're not. How did probation and parole not see that? You're supposed to, from what I understand, you can correct me, sir. The probation parole officer, whoever's in charge of that, is at least supposed to go and visually inspect where the workplace is, whatever.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Certainly should. Yeah. Um there could have been um some of that. I mean, it is so early that it'll take, um, I've said this before, it'll take about a month for the file to get on my desk after these arrests take place. But yeah, uh, probation and parole is supposed to go out and and do site monitors, home monitors, that sort of stuff. Um, so how that person, um, and that's part of the charges, is uh you see the police were talking about you should have told us, because it here's a here's a there's a a lot of little crooks and places here. Um, first and foremost, and y'all, I had my preacher ask me how did that happen? And I said, Look, uh, you'd be surprised. I get a call at least once a month from a preacher, a local preacher, hey, this guy's visiting our church. Is there anything? Yeah, but visiting church or going to church is different than being uh part of a youth group or youth ministry or being alone with kids. Um, and you get this stuff all the time, and and I think that especially church folks get into church talk and you know talk about well, we've forgiven them, restored, and all that. All of that's great, and we hope as Christians that that that has gone on, but it doesn't relieve us of the duty to keep a strong eye because this is a different type of crime. Uh murder, um most of the time, unless you're a serial killer, you're not going to keep just murdering people. You know, there are uh mental diseases like kleptomania that makes you steal all the time, but a lot of times um a person could steal one time and not steal again. Or, you know, there's this is one of those crimes that seems to be compounded, you know, because there's something just not going on there. Um so we've we owe a real duty, and um, you know, I I tell these ministers all the time, taking off my prosecution hat, look, don't split a church or don't put people at risk over that. You got to keep a real eye on that, and most of them do. Say, look, we're we're not going to allow you to be around kids. The second part that happened here is that this is one of the churches that has uh a school type facility. So again, I don't have the file on my desk yet, but uh what would generally happen in a case like this is the probation person would say, Hey, where are you gonna work? Oh, um Pirates Voyage, or um, I've got a job at um as a window cleaner or whatever, never telling the rest of the story that there's I'm window cleaning at a school. Um and it's but that's where the visual inspection comes into play. That's where the government agencies gotta go out and make sure to look at it. Yeah. Oh, you are working at a church, but this church has got a daycare center, you know. So uh it's one thing. Um that's that's why we can't just take, you know, uh these by phone or you you gotta go out and do certain stuff. And I don't know that um that the probation person didn't do all of that. I mean, I I still don't have it yet, but that's that's the way that um if you just are relying on them, they can tell you a partial truth and it not be the the whole truth. So um there's a lot to untangle with that um with that case, but it is a lot more common, um not not necessarily volunteering at a school, but it's a lot more common for churches to have to struggle with this sort of stuff with a singing group that's coming around, or um, you know, somebody that started attending churches. Um and you know, Liz had mentioned to me off air uh another instance, uh I won't name the church, but a guy had been convicted uh in Georgetown County and then got convicted in Williamsburg County and had to um of sex abuse of children?

SPEAKER_03 8:58

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:59

Well, some sort of sex abuse.

SPEAKER_03 9:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

And uh got a major sentence, and the question was off the air, how's this person out of jail? Well, I'm aware of that case because the Williamsburg case was overturned by the Court of Appeals. So it completely undid all of that work, and now that person when you And they're not even on a sex offender list because they're not gonna be on the sex offender list because of the Georgetown charges. Okay, but uh they're no longer in prison. So by being on that list, it's incumbent upon us as employers, as church members, as wherever we come into contact, um to make sure that we protect the kids that are that could be put at risk. And yeah, you know, it's easy and and obviously the the preacher in this case and several others have been um arrested, but y'all there's not a easier website on um on the internet than that um sex abuse registry. When you look those up, you look up the name, um, not only will you see that person, several photographs of them, you'll see um where they live, you'll see what they drive. It's it's all there. Um and the sheriff's office runs those.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

What's the search criteria? If there were churches listening right now and they wanted to check, what do they need?

SPEAKER_01 10:33

What is it? You just uh you can go to it if you're the church is in Georgetown, you would go to the Georgetown Sheriff's Office website, uh Sex Registry. Uh if it's an ORI, you go to Philip Thompson's uh website. But if you just put um sex registry in the Google search, uh Ory County Sex Registry, Georgetown, it'll start off by lighting up a hole um every red dot and it'll scare you to death. Now let me tell you, just in all fairness, uh all of these cases, um the one's not the same as another. And uh you can have people on there for pretty menace uh minute things that just by statute puts you on the sex registry. And it could be, you know, anywhere from um CSC where a person is, you know, held down and and raped. That is that's on there. So you have to go through 'em and and uh look at 'em. But especially around Halloween, uh, they're not supposed to be opening their doors to um to to people and being around kids that way. So uh there's or have the lights on. Yeah, you're not you're not supposed to to do any of that stuff.

SPEAKER_03 11:56

And when you plead guilty or put on that uh sex registry, um you lose certain abilities to work certain places and you So you can't be around any place like would you be a I don't know if you know the answer is w is he allowed to volunteer? Is that a way to get around things? Uh volunteer at a place, maybe not hired, but you're volunteering at a place that has children in it, like a church or someplace that might children might be. I'm not even talking about school, right? Just a church. And are you allowed to be there when there are church when church is in session? I mean, are you allowed to clean it on the overnight? I mean, because you know, they may say, Oh, he's a custodian after school hours or after church hours, but we learned that that wasn't even true.

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Well, that's uh and the the the easy answer is if you're on probation, that's gonna come with extra restrictions, not necessarily just by the law. But I would say, and yes, it's a decision by churches, by uh schools, um whether or not to hire somebody, they've got to do a background check and for what. Uh but um and I understand I heard y'all talking about it, uh, it may be a little bit creepy to have them there overnight. That is going to be a lot harder for Jimmy to go prosecute in court if he worked overnight and away from kids, uh, even though it might not be a hundred percent correct. Keep in mind now, uh the law is not uh for you to make a hundred on every test. It is when you fall below such a standard that um you should have to wear handcuffs. That is uh not the perfect answer, but you know, it's a lot of lot of difference between perfect and pretty good.

SPEAKER_02 13:54

Well, if I was running a church and somebody popped up on the radar and he was on this and you looked deeper into it and see that he, by example, wasn't just caught peeing in a park somewhere, but was engaging in some sort of abuse, I would just say no, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

At any time of the day. I I I totally agree with you. And I and I'm telling you, I get these calls at least once a month from preachers and uh and people up there. And that's my advice. Um I want that person to be saved, I want their eternal security um to be um in heaven, uh, and I want them to be fixed. But while they're here on earth, I gotta protect these kids. I can't that's perfectly said. Yeah, I can't um I can't put them at risk for you.

SPEAKER_03 14:42

Um before we run out of time and then we almost almost are, I just wanted to ask you, and we're speaking with uh 15th Circuit solicitor Jimmy Richardson of Orion, Georgetown County. What I we saw, I saw this um press conference about the dog fighting rings and the um uh fact that it attracts drugs and prostitution and all these things. Uh there was a recent arrest of a guy who had done it in the past before, now did it again, now 58 dogs. What it what can you tell us about this?

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Um that again sound like a broken record, but it really does take about a month for uh the charges to get from the magistrate's office to our office. So I haven't seen. Here's some stuff I would expect.

SPEAKER_03 15:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:30

Um in almost all of these cases, um, the the guy that's putting these on will say, This is the the defense every time. I don't have dog fighting. I got hog fighting, which is legal, where I engage this, I train these dogs to go out and fight hogs. That's legal. Um, so we're not fighting dogs. Uh, we're training these dogs to go catch wild hogs. So that is a around. Yeah, well, that's that's comes up every time. Another problem that comes up every time is um they have to take these dogs into the um Ory County shelter or Georgetown County shelter, and you can't really um adopt the yeah, you can't send out one of these dogs to uh because the dog all he's known is fighting. So you can't put him up with a kid either. It's all about trying to protect uh kids and uh uh you know, a dog that's been through that sort of stuff, uh, that ain't a family pet. So it puts a tremendous amount on the the dog pound, um, puts a tremendous amount on um, you know, county government have to pay and keep keep these animals that, like you said, is just not going to be able to be rehabilitated, even if they are just fighting hogs. There's still not going to be a good dog uh family pit.

SPEAKER_03 17:05

No. And you know what, that might be the route you need to take. I mean, how many people literally use these dogs for hog hunting? Do you know of anybody? Uh I I don't know I mean I I hate to, you know, put any restrictions on hunter and fishermen, but honestly, maybe that should be outlawed.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

There's a yeah, there if you would outlaw that, that would take away. And look, they're they got rifles. Exactly. There's easier ways to kill wild hogs. I know some people are into that kind of sport, but man, shoot the hog. If he's around there, um get rid of the hog, and uh and you don't even have to be a good thing.

SPEAKER_03 17:46

Why does it have to be a blood sport like that? So why doesn't somebody in the legislature actually do that and let's just stop these dog fighting rings? Over. Do you ever live in the comments of these like these people that are promoting their dogs?

SPEAKER_01 18:03

If I didn't have this uh job, I would be in the comments because I mean it makes you it makes you extremely angry. But um so I get it, but um I swear I think about 90% of the time there are legislators that want these loopholes, whether it's um whether it's DUI lawyer legislators that are in the defense department.

SPEAKER_02 18:26

If you have loopholes, there's more chances for you to end up in court. Well, you need their services.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

Exactly, exactly. And and I'm telling you, um they they always complain about these DUIs, and I get it, I get it, but I promise you, Georgia's statute, they're our neighbors, North Carolina's, they're our neighbors, Tennessee, um, their laws are so much better on DUIs that um it's just crazy. And then they'll uh try to make a big thing out of it. Well, y'all the one that wrote the stuff that's 26 pages long and full of loopholes. Uh why don't we just put in there that you can't drive a car if you're under the influence of alcohol and leave it at that and not all of this staggering around and if you walk off the camera and all of that stuff, uh get rid of all that. This pastime they tried to pass it where police officers would have to be on the side of the road drawing blood, and we'll get phlebotomous slash police officers. Come on, man. Uh that even it doesn't make sense.

SPEAKER_03 19:33

They'll find a loophole in there. They really do. Yeah. Well, Jimmy Richardson, we're out of time. I'm sorry, but thank you so much for bringing us up to speed on that, and we'll talk talk to you in a couple of weeks.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

All right. Thanks, guys.

SPEAKER_03 19:44

Thank you.