Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott says he’s “very disappointed” in a decision by the 5th Circuit Solicitor’s Office to not seek the death penalty for a man formerly on death row after murdering two people in Richland County.
The man will now serve life in prison, a decision supported by the victims’ families, according to the solicitor’s office.
Qunicy Allen, who said he wanted to be a Mafia hitman, was convicted in 2002 of brutally murdering two people in Richland County before killing two more in North Carolina.
Locally, Allen shot and killed Dale Hale, a woman he met on Two Notch Road, with a shotgun near I-77 in Columbia. He then doused her body with gasoline and set it on fire. A month after that killing, Allen ⏤ again using a shotgun ⏤ shot and killed Jedediah Harr, a bystander in an argument Allen had with others outside the Texas Roadhouse Grill on Two Notch Road.
Although Allen was ultimately sentenced to death, his sentence was overturned in 2022 by the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which found that the trial judge failed to “consider” all favorable evidence for him in the case.
That decision left 5th Circuit Solicitor Byron Gipson with a choice: re-try the sentencing phase of Allen’s trial to try to resecure the death penalty or settle with a life sentence. Gipson chose the latter, spurring Lott to express his disappointment with the case.
“I am very disappointed in your decision,” Lott wrote in an email to 5th Circuit Deputy Solicitor Dan Goldberg and Gipson. “Quincy Allen is a cold-blooded killer of four victims. He will continue to kill as he has already demonstrated in prison. Any other deaths/injuries/crimes committed by him will be the result of your decision.
“It’s sad that the voices of the victims cannot be heard because we are not speaking for them,” Lott said.
While incarcerated, Allen was charged with assault and battery on a prison employee with intent to kill in 2009, according to South Carolina Department of Corrections records. In 2012, he was charged with possessing a weapon while still behind bars and, in 2014, for threatening to inflict harm on a prison employee.
Prior to the 4th Circuit overturning Allen’s sentence, the S.C. Supreme Court unanimously upheld his death sentence in 2009, saying the sentence was “proper” and supported by ample aggravating circumstances that made him eligible for the death penalty.
“Allen gave statements to police outlining the details of his crimes,” the Supreme Court noted. “He told police he began killing people because an inmate in federal prison, where Allen spent time for stealing a vehicle, had told him he could get him a job as a Mafia hit man.”
Before starting his death spree, Allen used a homeless man, James White, 51 ⏤ who was sitting on a bench in Finlay Park in downtown Columbia ⏤ for target practice. Allen shot him twice to learn how to use his shotgun, the high court noted.
“If anyone deserves the death penalty, it’s Quincy Allen,” Lott told The State Friday.
In an email last week to Lott and attorneys connected to Allen’s case, Goldberg said the decision to not re-try Allen for the death penalty was largely based on wishes from the victims’ families.
“After a great deal of consideration, we have decided to allow Mr. Allen to be sentenced to life in prison rather than re-trying the sentencing phase of his previous death penalty trial. This decision was based in large part on conversations that our office has had with the surviving next of kin of both Ms. Hall and Ms. Harr,” Goldberg wrote.
“This was not an easy decision by any stretch of the imagination,” Goldberg continued. “Solicitor Gipson and I discussed the case at great lengths and he struggled mightily with how to resolve it. In the end, the idea of getting immediate closure for these families, rather than potentially living thru another 18 years of litigation, carried the day.”
The sentencing will be placed on the record in front of Judge Debra McCaslin on Monday, July 22, at 1 p.m., in Lexington County.
Out of respect for the family, Gipson told The State Friday that he didn’t think addressing Lott’s comments were “proper” before Monday’s hearing, but that he and Goldberg plan to fully explain their reasoning before McCaslin on Monday.
When sentenced in 2007, Allen, of Columbia, became the first person in Richland County in 10 years to receive the death penalty. In five other death penalty trials, from 1997 to 2000, defendants received life sentences. Richland County juries are known for handing down life sentences instead of death penalties.
But Allen’s case was unusual in that a judge, not a jury, imposed the sentence.
Allen had pleaded guilty before Judge G. Gordon Cooper, and Cooper then heard testimony about whether Allen should get the death penalty or life.
Allen’s lawyers contended the killer suffered from schizophrenia during his crime spree ⏤ but prosecutors said claims of mental illness were exaggerated.
Allen’s lawyers also said he had suffered a horrendous childhood, shuffled among relatives. His mother once stuffed him in a trash can.
It was those circumstances surrounding Allen’s childhood that led the 4th Circuit to overturn his original death sentence.
The appeals court said that Cooper, who sentenced Allen to death after 10 days of testimony in 2005, “did not consider all of Allen’s mitigating evidence” and sometimes “assigned no weight at all” to crucial mitigating evidence that works in favor of the defendant.
“The trial court in this case just completely failed to give meaningful consideration to the overwhelming mental illness this young man has suffered, and the profound damage that Quincy had been subjected to as a young man and as a child,” said 5th Circuit Public Defender Fielding Pringle , who served as Allen’s defense counsel when he was convicted in 2005.
Allen had a severe mental illness at the time of the killings and the sentence would likely have been different if the judge had not “excluded, ignored or overlooked” defense testimony concerning it, the federal panel said.
Allen also has pleaded guilty and been sentenced to life for killing the two North Carolina men in 2002.
“Both families previously expressed that they would be okay with life, so long as Mr. Allen waived all appeals, and that they were ready to move on with their lives,” Goldberg said in the email to Lott. “Our office has made contact with both families again over the last few days and they each reiterated those same feelings. Mr. Allen has signed a waiver of all appeals and a waiver of his right to pursue a (post conviction relief).”
“I appreciate and I’m grateful to the solicitor for looking at all of the factors ... and getting us to the right outcome,” Pringle said. “He should of never been sentenced to death. Never should have happened that he was sentenced to death. But ultimately, the system did what it was supposed to, and righted itself.”
Staff writer John Monk contributed to this story.
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