Ex-police chief indicted in S.C. killing

A South Carolina grand jury has returned a murder indictment against a white former police chief in the 2011 killing of an unarmed black man he was trying to arrest.

Richard Combs, the former chief of the Eutawville, S.C., police, had previously been charged with official misconduct in the death of the man, Bernard Bailey, and was to stand trial on that charge Monday in Orangeburg County.

The grand jury signed the murder indictment Wednesday, and the charge was made public Thursday morning.

The indictment followed decisions by grand juries in Missouri and New York not to charge white officers in the deaths of unarmed black men.

Those cases, which are being reviewed by the Justice Department for possible civil-rights violations, generated widespread protests.

The indictment in South Carolina was expected. Prosecutors told Combs’ lawyer in a letter in November 2013 that they planned to seek a murder charge against the former chief. In a separate letter last month, the authorities said they were merely waiting for a judge to rule on a motion by Combs to use the state’s Stand Your Ground law as part of his defense.

The shooting, outside Eutawville’s Town Hall, took place after Combs tried to detain Bailey because of an outstanding arrest warrant. Bailey had visited the Town Hall in reference to a traffic ticket his daughter had received.

During a November hearing, a partial video of which was published online by The Times and Democrat newspaper, Combs testified that he fired three shots during a struggle at Bailey’s vehicle. The former chief said that he had become “stuck” in the vehicle as he fought with Bailey, who he said pushed him.

But state Solicitor David Pascoe Jr. questioned Combs’ account.

“You’re telling the court,” Pascoe said as he sat on the floor in the midst of a re-enactment of the shooting, “that he’s coming toward you, after you shot him two times at pointblank range with a .40-caliber pistol in the chest?” “Yes, sir,” Combs replied. Judge Edgar Dickson of the Circuit Court, who on Nov. 25 rejected Combs’ plan to invoke South Carolina’s Stand Your Ground law, also expressed misgivings about the former chief’s conduct.

“In a situation such as this, where the arrestee poses no threat to the public, there are other means of executing an arrest warrant if initial service is unsuccessful,” Dickson wrote in an order last month.

The judge added: “There was no need for Mr. Combs to act as he did on May 2, 2011, when Mr. Bailey refused service, as Mr. Combs expected would happen. Mr. Combs should have allowed Mr. Bailey to leave and enlisted the assistance of other officers or serve the warrant at court as he originally planned.”

On Thursday, Carl Grant, a lawyer representing Bailey’s family members, said they welcomed the indictment.

“They honestly felt the charge of misconduct in office was really insufficient to represent the gravity of what happened,” said Grant, who added that the indictment “reassures you that there is still a level of justice one can respect in the American judicial system.”

But Combs’ lawyer raised questions about Pascoe’s timing of the murder charge.

“He’s trying to make it racial,” John O’Leary said. “He’s got all the national issues going on.”

Eutawville, which is about 36 percent black and last year elected its first black mayor, in April settled a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Bailey’s family, court records show. Grant said the settlement was for $400,000.