State will not restore Marlboro County sheriff’s felony assault charge in inmate abuse case

MARLBORO COUNTY, S.C. ( QUEEN CITY NEWS ) — It took the S.C. Attorney General’s Office a little more than two weeks to decide whether to drag Marlboro County Sheriff Charles Lemon back into a courtroom over a 2020 jailhouse tasing.

In late 2021, Queen City News Chief Investigative Reporter Jody Barr obtained a video recording showing Sheriff Lemon ordering Deputy Andrew Cook to shock inmate Jarrel Johnson multiple times with a Taser. The S.C. Law Enforcement Division also obtained the same video recording.

On Dec. 14, 2021, the AG’s office went to the Marlboro County grand jury and obtained a felony assault and misconduct in office indictment against Lemon and Cook.

The prosecution sat idle until January 2024 when the U.S. Department of Justice opened a civil rights prosecution by securing federal indictments against Lemon and Cook on a single count of depravation of rights under color of law.

This is essentially a federal charge accusing a government official of excessive force.

Cook pleaded guilty to the federal charge in January 2024. Lemon took his charge to trial in August 2024 and the federal jury found him not guilty on August 19.

The AG’s office dismissed the state charges against both men in March, abandoning the state-level prosecutions. However, the dismissal included a note that the AG’s office could reinstate the charges.

We asked the AG’s office whether it would reinstate the state charges on August 20, the day after Lemon’s acquittal. The AG’s office said at the time a decision on reinstatement had not been made.

On Sept. 4, the AG’s office wrote QCN with its final decision on pursuing the state prosecution against Lemon and Cook, “We do not believe it serves the interest of justice to reindict on the same set of facts which has been fully presented before a jury in federal court in cooperation with the State investigators and prosecutors,” AG spokesman Robert Kittle wrote.

However, the jailhouse assault case isn’t the end of the criminal investigations into Lemon stemming from his tenure as sheriff. Last August, SLED opened an investigation into allegations Lemon ordered his warrant clerk, Sandi Wilkes, to shred bench warrants signed by Marlboro County Clerk of Court Joy Williams.

Interim Sheriff Larry McNeil’s office said last summer they discovered up to 200 bench warrants were shredded instead of being served by deputies. Wilkes, according to Chief Deputy Larry Turner, told investigators that Lemon told her to shred warrants signed off by Williams and to not shred bench warrants signed off by a circuit court judge. State law allows a clerk to sign a bench warrant if a judge tells a clerk to do so.

Lemon, through his attorney, denied the allegations.

At the time, the MCSO didn’t have a final accounting of exactly how many warrants were shredded. SLED finished its investigation into the warrant shredding in early 2024 and handed its investigative file over to the AG’s office for a decision on whether charges would be filed.

The AG’s office tells QCN that state prosecutors still have not yet decided whether to file a charge in that investigation.

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