Crossroads 2026: Winners and Losers

Why didn’t you list Germaine Johnson among the winners and Nancy Mace among the losers?
Germaine Johnson impressed me (that alone should make him a winner, ha ha ha) with his response during his victory party to a question about Cyrus Carmack-Belton. Germaine Johnson did not demagogue or racialize the events; instead, he sensitively harkened to his own pain after his own brother was shot in the back by that brother’s best friend and put the issue where it belonged: gun violence. I was very impressed with Mrs. Germaine Johnson’s words upon her loving husband’s genuine invitation for his baby to come to the mic and say something. She is truly the opposite of the angry black woman stereotype or the chattering wife of any race stereotype. That is a couple to watch, encourage, and emulate.
But Wes Donahue needs to remake, not reinvent, himself. Sure, he has or had a company of 50 or so employees to run and genuinely worry about their livelihoods. Still, this is a rapidly changing world; and those who do not change with it risk being churned in its wheels.
Nancy Mace needs to really find the real Jesus or stop blaspheming by calling herself a Christian. She needs a conversion like Saul of Tarsus’ on the Road to Damascus or a bitter cry of remorse like Saint Peter’s after the roosted crowed thrice.

Will Alan Wilson join me in these open questions to Retired/Active SC Circuit Judge Edgar Dickson, to Judge McCaslin, and to other judges who, I hope, will read this or be told about it by their law clerks?
I pray one of those judges will have the courage and the skill to tell current SC Chief Justice Kittredge that the overriding purpose of SC’s entire judicial branch should not be the discrediting of Dr. Marie Faltas to the point of all agents of that branch losing their self-respect and leading the whole SC population into magical thinking and exposing SC’s people and judges to the ridicule of the nation, if not the world.
To Judge Dickson, who volunteered in the one hearing I had by WebEx with him that he is a fan of Egypt-born soccer-striker Mo Salah, I hope you are enjoying the World Cup games (I only check the results of matches) and specially will enjoy the coming dual-to-soccer-death between Mo Salah and Leo Messi.
Pleasantries aside, in Judge McCaslin’s televised court room, or one next-door to it, in the then-relatively new but poorly-engineered Lexington County Courthouse Building, I sat leaning with a crutch and saw a lawyer for an inmate/PCR applicant tell Judge Dickson that said lawyer had consulted a medical doctor that lawyer did not name but will not call that medical doctor to testify and will not use her opinion because it is “too favorable” to that lawyer’s client, the inmate seeking PCR.
For the non-lawyer readers, PCR is in SC law parlance post-conviction relief which is allowed within a year after a person convicted of any crime in SC had exhausted his/her direct state appeals. PCR usually, but NOT necessarily, alleges the criminal trial/plea and/or appellate counsel(s) was/were ineffective to a point that prejudiced the person convicted of an SC crime.
If, but only if and after (with very limited exceptions), state PCR fails, the convicted person may, again within a year, seek habeas from the federal courts.
The preceding two paragraphs were ONLY to explain the context of my presence in Judge Dickson’s court in March/April 2013, and are NOT to be taken as legal advice, because I am NOT a lawyer, only better than most.
And of course, as usual, I have transcripts and official records to document what I write.
In further context explanation, the inmate/PCR applicant was one Michael Elder/Elders, who had been convicted and sentenced to 30 years for CSC with this then-pre-teen daughter. Michael had been convicted on the testimony of a SANE (Sex Abuse Nurse Examiner) nurse that the redness she saw in that that girl’s mons pubis and/or labia minora must have been due to sexually-abusive rubbing because, according to that SANE nurse, “estrogen is not present before puberty.”
Michael’s lawyer had also been separately forced on me after then-SC-Chief-Justice Toal & Co. had by judicial fiat denied me the right to self-representation to punish my success, thank God and WITHOUT A LAWYER, in thwarting Hatchet-for-Hire Heather’s (“Weiss”) scheme to FALSELY convict me of harassment and get me incarcerated for 36 years, yes, thirty-six; but I still had smaller matters arising from draconian Eighth-Amendment-violating bonds imposed on me between the FALSE harassment accusations and my COMPLETE exoneration therefrom.
That lawyer with Michael Elder/Elders as a self-paid client on one side, and me as an appointed client on the other, knew he would not get more money from either Michael or me even if he won our respective case. He also knew that winning Michael’s and/or my cases would arouse Hatchet-for-Hire Heather’s notorious wrath on that lawyer and deny him plea agreements for future clients, which is basically (despite the rare publicized trials exceptions) all criminal defense lawyers do: plea bargain.
So that lawyer decided that, in one fell swoop, he can bait me into contempt of court and lose Michael’s case by asking me, as a medical expert, to review Michael’s case. I did and was horrified by that SANE nurse’s ignorance of basic endocrinology and by her failure to put a ruler next to what she claimed to be the lesion in the that girl’s mons pubis in the photos used as prosecution exhibits.
I told that lawyer, who had induced me to read a lengthy transcript without pre-payment but with a false promise of after-payment, that I would testify that estrogen is present at birth and it is progesterone, not estrogen, that does not appear until puberty, and that the supposed UNMEASURED and undated redness on the girl’s mons pubis was transient and NOT indicative of CSC.
With that lawyer not presenting my testimony, even though I was sitting (despite my excruciating knee pain) in that courtroom, Judge Dickson denied PCR.
That lawyer did NOT even tell Michael until I saw, on Lexington County’s Public Index, a letter from Michael to Lexington County’s Clerk of Court. I went to the courthouse myself and saw the file. The letter indicated that Michael did not learn of what ruling was entered but thought he had won and was asking when could he go home.
Poor, poor thing!
That day or shortly thereafter, I emailed that lawyer, “Are you a monster, Mr. [lawyer], doing this to someone who trusted you?” I meant that failure to tell the client of the unfavorable outcome made him run out of time to appeal.
I would have reported that lawyer to SC’s ODC (Office of Disciplinary Counsel) had he not acted promptly (and undoubtedly in fear of the consequences to HIMSELF ALONE, not out of care for the client who had pre-paid his last dime to that lawyer) and acknowledged his negligence and cooperated in getting that client a belated appeal, which the client ultimately won with an appointed lawyer, but after A DECADE more of incarceration.
And, on this Sunday, I ask Judge Dickson, is the Sabbath made for people or people for the Sabbath?
Paraphrasing Jesus Christ’s statement, lawyers are made for clients, not clients for lawyers.
And rules are made for courts to dispense efficient and SPEEDY justice, NOT delay justice.
Had I stood up on my crutch that March/April 2013 day and asked Judge Dickson to hear my expert testimony which Michael’s lawyer had maliciously suppressed, would Judge Dickson have heard me or held me in contempt of court?
And I ask Judge McCaslin what she would have done had she been then in Judge Dickson’s seat on the bench.
I know what Kittredge did to me for allegedly emailing Rasputin Shearouse asking why some of my cases had inexplicably disappeared from SC C-track. Kittredge mercilessly, and after an unconstitutional trial WITHOUT A JURY (which I had timely demanded) but before himself and four associates, threw me in the fearsome Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center (ASGDC), where even some guards are violent criminals, and where I was struck with a heart condition which was then deliberately neglected by ASGDC and has since become permanent and incurable.
And NOT ONE lawyer or judge in the length and breadth of SC spoke up for me or for that Constitution they wax eloquent in defending BUT ONLY when the national cameras are rolling.
Would Judge McCaslin hear my expert testimony over Alex Murdaugh’s defense team’s heads, and over the inexplicable grudge Kittredge still holds against me even though I did nothing to him but he almost caused my death in that ASGDC?
Would Judge McCaslin, on her own motion, invite my expert testimony that would efficiently and inexpensively, not only exonerate Alex Murdaugh of the shootings of Paul and Maggie, but also compel the withdrawal of his guilty pleas for the so-called “financial crimes” because made under the duress of his then-undiagnosed depression of Paul and Maggie’s demise and Alex’s failure to prevent it by having placated whoever the real shooters were?
Would Judge McCaslin have the courage to “do the right thing” when it is THE OPPOSITE of the system-sustaining thing?
Jesus Christ dispensed a miracle cure on a sabbath because He was obeying a higher Biblical Commandment to not put off till tomorrow the good you can do today.
Jesus Christ did not await the sabbath’s lapse because He did not want a man to remain unhealed FOR EVEN ONE DAY LONGER.
A warning higher than punctilious court rules is: Justice Delayed IS Justice Denied.
5 April 2027 is NOT fast enough to BEGIN to exonerate Alex Murdaugh when Judge McCaslin has the power, on her own motion, to call independent Court Experts TOMORROW to explain to her the various SCIENTIFIC points I have been raising since I watched that now-vacated-trial unfold.
A process of a court, on its own motion, summoning neutral court experts with no financial interest in the ultimate outcome will NOT be a violation of the rules but will be obedience to the constitutional rules of MEANINGFUL Due Process and SPEEDY trial/retrial.
Alex Murdaugh already missed the funeral of his mother and the birth of his first grandchild, all while the real shooters of Paul and Maggie roam free.
Does Judge McCaslin have the courage to “do the right thing” over the system-sustaining thing?
And as always, would FITS have the courage to run this comment of mine?
FITS has my permission to run this comment of mine as a stand-alone letter.
Will he have the courage to do so?