Before we get too far removed from the whole bizarre dispute between Equity Court Judge Joseph Strickland and the Richland County legislative delegation, we need to spend a few minutes on an extraordinary rebuke that one of our justices lobbed at his colleagues on the S.C. Supreme Court as part of that dispute.

The rebuke had nothing to do with Judge Strickland's lawsuit against the legislators, and it didn't actually mention the name of the other Richland County judge whose own extraordinary ruling set the high court's internal squabbling in motion, but the target was unmistakable. And it reminded us of a problem in our courts that the justices have thus far refused to address, despite an unequivocal promise on April 26 to do so.

A week before the unanimous Supreme Court ordered Richland lawmakers to forward Judge Strickland's nomination for reappointment to Gov. Henry McMaster, four of the five justices ordered the S.C. Judicial Merit Selection Commission to stop processing applications for the master-in-equity position that Mr. Strickland has held for more than three decades.

The majority reasoned that halting screening was the only way to preserve Judge Strickland’s rights until it ultimately sided with him. But Associate Justice John Few made the not-unreasonable argument that since the merit commission didn't have the authority to actually replace Judge Strickland, the court could preserve his rights without enjoining the commission.

'Recent disappointing record'

After explaining the difficult timeline the court had created for itself, Mr. Few wrote: “The Court’s recent disappointing record of not releasing opinions in a timely manner raises a significant risk we will be pushing the November JMSC hearings before we can decide whether Judge Strickland is correct.” He also trenchantly urged his colleagues to hold oral arguments in the Strickland matter and "promptly issue an opinion."

Granted, that might not feel pointed to you; but trust me: This sort of commentary on the court's productivity is ... notable. And although there likely are some other orders the court is sitting on — attorneys have been complaining for some time about how long it’s taking the court to release opinions — the one opinion of high public import that is long overdue involves the case of Jeroid Price.

Mr. Price, you recall, was convicted of murder in 2003 and sentenced to 35 years in prison. Under S.C. law, he was required to serve at least 30 years, but retiring Circuit Judge Casey Manning held a secret hearing on his final day in the office and issued a secret order releasing him after serving only 19 years. When The Post and Courier reported on the release, Attorney General Alan Wilson asked the court to intervene, and the justices did so almost immediately, in a brief 3-2 order vacating Judge Manning’s order and directing law enforcement to return Mr. Price to prison. In that order, the court promised to file “a formal opinion explaining the basis for its decision.”

Which we have yet to see.

And about which Justice Few has appropriately reminded us.

This certainly wouldn't be the first time the court sat on an important opinion. The Abbeville v. South Carolina school equity case didn’t take two decades to resolve simply because it kept ping-ponging between the Circuit and Supreme courts; the high court itself took nearly a decade after the lower court order to reach a decision — including more than two years pondering a decision after it heard a second round of oral arguments on the second appeal. Then-Chief Justice Jean Toal would make it clear to the judicial selection panel in the midst of the delay that she was trying (unsuccessfully, it turned out) to come up with language that could produce a unanimous decision.

Mixed signals on secrecy

The Jeroid Price case is an entirely different animal: The what was settled immediately, but the why remains unexplained.

That would leave an unacceptable vacuum even if the judicial branch had done nothing besides holding an energetic session of oral arguments and issuing its cryptic order, because the justices’ comments during that hearing indicated that judges not infrequently write double-super-secret orders after holding double-super-secret hearings.

But the promised explanation became vital when judicial staff (who report to the chief justice) sent out an email that seemed to condone the secret process — which Justice Few and others had called out during oral arguments as a violation of the state constitution and state law.

Just two weeks after the Price order and in response to a report to the governor on other prisoners whom judges had released early, the judicial branch released a statement providing what it called "background” on the law that allows judges to reduce the sentences of some inmates who provide substantial assistance to the Corrections Department. The two-page release argued that “Unfortunately, the context of the reduction request is sometimes unknown to the general public due to the sensitive nature of the information supporting the request.”

Actually, the only time the request is unknown to the public is when a judge agrees to make it unknown — and that's something three of the five members of the S.C. Supreme Court seem to acknowledge is prohibited by either the state constitution or state law, or both. But we don’t know for sure how far their concerns go, how they balance them against other concerns or even the specific basis for them. Because, as Justice Few noted only slightly obliquely, the court still hasn’t issued its promised opinion explaining its decision. More than three months after it had promised to do so.

This has gone on too long. The public deserves to know — and apparently judges and some employees of the Supreme Court need to know — how much of their work judges are allowed to do in secret.

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