15th Circuit Solicitor Greg Hembree talks about the recent departure of three assistant solicitors, and how it will not affect the remaining attorneys’ caseloads, in a press release published in the Sun News today. “Three attorneys in the 15th Circuit Solicitor’s office have left the prosecutor’s office to go into private practice this year, Solicitor Greg Hembree said Friday.”
Actually, four attorneys have left the prosecutor’s office. There is no press release about the fourth, who I suspect was fired, following an episode where she was or was not (it was threatened but I don’t know the outcome) held in contempt for her behavior during a hearing on a motion to compel Brady material. Four attorneys in the 15th Circuit Solicitor’s Office have left to go into private practice.
“Hembree said the departures are expected because he understands the nature of attorneys getting experience as prosecutors and then going into private practice.” That probably applies to Larry Filiberto, who left and has opened his own law practice in North Myrtle Beach, and to Mike O’Sullivan, who has gone to work defending insurance companies at an otherwise respectable law firm, but probably not to the third or fourth attorneys who left. The third attorney worked there since 1999, and I suspect was a career prosecutor until he was arrested for DUI. The fourth attorney was, I suspect, fired.
Hembree then says he will be filling only two of the open positions due to budget cutbacks. Which sounds a lot like he is saying they are losing one attorney position (he said that three attorneys have left the office). Except that four attorneys left, not three. Which means they are losing two attorney positions. I believe they are one short in the magistrate court division as well. Which would make them at least three attorneys shy of what they have had in past years, after they hire two more attorneys.
I don’t normally comment on press releases from the solicitor’s office, but the misstatements and misleading statements in this one really jumped out at me. Particularly given that Greg Hembree announced this week that he is running for Senate.
