SLED chief faces senate vote after paying $11,307 sanction in SC hemp farmer lawsuit
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COLUMBIA, S.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — South Carolina’s top law enforcer will face a panel of South Carolina state senators Wednesday morning in a long-awaited confirmation hearing to keep his job as the State Law Enforcement Division director.
Keel joined SLED in 1979. Former Gov. Nikki Haley appointed Keel to lead the statewide police force in 2011. Keel’s most recent six-year term ended in December 2023 and Gov. Henry McMaster reappointed Keel to the job just days later on Dec. 7.
But Keel’s appointment isn’t official until the S.C. Senate confirms Keel. A subcommittee of the S.C. Senate Judiciary Committee will meet at 10 a.m. Wednesday to take the first step in the confirmation process.
WATCH SLED CHIEF MARK KEEL’S CONFIRMATION HEARING LIVE HERE
McMaster’s appointment in December happened just six days before the S.C. Supreme Court handed down a decision on Keel’s appeal of a lower court’s order that he pay a hemp farmer an $11,307 sanction for discovery abuses in the farmer’s lawsuit against Keel and SLED. The farmer, Trent Pendarvis, sued Keel and SLED a year after the head of Keel’s drug unit raided Pendarvis’ Dorchester County hemp field.
SLED accused Pendarvis, a licensed hemp grower, of growing hemp without a license. The agency claimed Pendarvis was growing hemp in unapproved fields because he planted the crop in a different field than he listed on his hemp growers application filed with the S.C. Department of Agriculture.
SLED raided Pendarvis’ farm in September 2019 and arrested him during the raid. It took the First Circuit Solicitor’s Office until August 2022 — three years after the arrest — to make a decision on how to prosecute the farmer. On Aug. 5, 2022, the prosecutor dismissed the charge against Pendarvis finding there was no evidence he violated the state’s Hemp Farming Act.
Pendarvis eventually sued Chief Mark Keel, SLED, the S.C. Department of Agriculture, and its commissioner, Hugh Weathers, among others. In a hearing on Oct. 31, 2022, Pendarvis’ attorney, Patrick McLaughlin, asked Dorchester County Circuit Court Judge Maite Murphy to sanction Keel over what McLaughlin argued were prolonged discovery abuses committed by Keel and SLED that kept evidence from the farmer to help prove his civil rights case against SLED.
McLaughlin warned Keel months before that if the agency did not “properly respond” to questions posed to Keel and SLED in the lawsuit, he’d ask the judge for sanctions against the SLED chief. McLaughlin did that in October 2022.
“I find that Keel’s conduct regarding discovery in this case has been dilatory, prejudicial, willful, intentional, and in bad faith and his responses have been false, misleading, and incomplete,” the judge wrote in the Feb. 28, 2023 order sanctioning Keel. “Despite the clear and plain language of the rule requiring answers under oath, and the specific requests by the Plaintiff that requirement be complied with, Keel has failed to comply with Rule 33. The Plaintiff has served Keel with four (4) sets of interrogatories. During the hearing, Keel conceded to only producing Rule 33 verifications for two (2): the 2nd and 3rd set of interrogatories,” the order continued.
SEIZE AND DESTROY: SLED Chief Mark Keel fined $11,300 for discovery abuses in hemp farmer civil suit
The judge agreed with McLaughlin regarding the delays caused by Keel’s discovery conduct.
Keel “ignored those noted deficiencies and warnings, refusing to cure his obviously inaccurate responses, and forced the Plaintiff to file his motions,” Murphy wrote, further finding that Keel “failed to offer the Court any reason or excuse” as to why he didn’t heed McLaughlin’s warnings.
The penalty for Keel not properly answering the requests for admissions is the court deemed Keel and SLED to have admitted to the facts laid out in the questions.
The judge also noted in her Feb. 28, 2023 order that Keel withheld “numerous communications” sent from the agency’s taxpayer-funded email server that contained Pendarvis’ name.
“Emails in the record that Keel did not identify or produce, were sent from and to “sled.sc.gov” email addresses. Keel is the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the State of South Carolina. It is inconceivable that Keel does not have the knowledge and capability to execute a keyword/term search of his agency’s digital email archives to identify and obtain every email communication that would be responsive to the Plaintiff’s discovery requests. The record reflects Keel failed to do so,” Murphy wrote in the sanctions order.
SLED won’t answer whether agents violated body camera policy in 2019 hemp farm raid
The order demanded Keel pay Pendarvis and McLaughlin $11,307 in sanctions. Keel appealed Murphy’s order to the S.C. Court of Appeals where he lost. Keel then asked the S.C. Supreme Court to review the decision, but the state’s highest court issued an order in December 2023, telling Keel it would not grant him the review.
Keel paid McLaughlin the $11,307 sanction days after the S.C. Supreme Court’s order. SLED’s spokeswoman also confirmed the sanction was paid with taxpayer dollars.
“To be clear, Chief Keel was and is named as a defendant in this action only in his official capacity as the Chief of SLED. As such, the attorney’s fees and costs awarded by Judge Murphy were not assessed against Chief Keel personally nor did he personally pay them. Rather, the amount was paid by SLED’s insurance carrier, the South Carolina Insurance Reserve Fund,” SLED spokeswoman Renee Wunderlich wrote in a Jan. 2, 2023, email to QCN.
THE GOVERNOR’S SUPPORT
In March 2023, a month after Murphy’s sanction order against Keel, we found McMaster at a public function to ask him about the discovery misconduct allegations against his cabinet appointee. McMaster’s handlers initially declined to schedule an interview with us to discuss the judge’s findings regarding the discovery abuses.
McMaster’s handlers eventually agreed to arrange a meeting at a public event at an aircraft manufacturing plant in the Upstate.
The entire exchange between Barr and the governor can be seen here:
McMaster defended Keel, saying the lifelong lawman has “a terrific reputation.”
McMaster admitted he never read the sanctions order against Keel, but that he “just read newspaper reports” about the hemp farmer’s case. McMaster also would not take a copy of the order from Barr during the March 2023 interview with the governor.
SLED chief pays hemp farmer’s attorney $11,300 sanction for discovery misconduct in hemp farm raid
“In the judge’s order, she writes, ‘I find that Keel’s conduct regarding discovery, in this case, has been dilatory, prejudicial, willful, intentional, and in bad faith, and that his responses have been false, misleading and incomplete,’” Barr said to the governor reading Judge Murphy’s quote from the lawsuit. “I read some of those words, but again, that’s, that’s the judge’s order and she’s doing her job. Chief Keel’s been in law enforcement a long time. He has a terrific reputation. His whole organization does, but again, this is a civil lawsuit and it’s going through the proper steps,” McMaster told QCN.
During our “Seize and Destroy” investigation, law enforcement sources told us about a SLED policy, telling agents they “shall be truthful and use candor in all official matters.” SLED later provided copies of the policies to us.
The policy originally went into effect on March 1, 1992, and was revised on Oct. 1, 2007. The 2007 version of the policy was signed off by Keel. The policy was again revised on Sept. 4, 2020, under order of Keel.
McMaster appeared to have never heard of the policy when we interviewed him in March 2023 and interrupted our questions about whether Keel adhered to his own policy and who holds a cabinet appointee accountable.
Here’s a transcript of that portion of our interview:
BARR: “The last question I have for you is, there’s a – SLED has a truthfulness policy…”
GOVERNOR: “Has a what?”
BARR: “Truthfulness policy, and it was signed by Chief Keel, 2021…it was updated, and it says in that policy, ‘Employees shall be truthful and use complete candor in all official matters, whether in the course of appointment or otherwise —”
GOVERNOR: “I understand and of course, there are always two sides, every story, and that’s what the judicial system is for. Chief Keel has been a respected law enforcement officer for many, many years. I’ve worked with him for many, many years. I have confidence, high confidence in him. Of course, the judge has a good reputation. But that’s what the legal system is for is to sort these things out in a methodical procedure that is set by law and that’s what’s happening.”
BARR: “Who should hold Chief Keel accountable for what —”
GOVERNOR: “How many times you gonna ask that same question?”
BARR: “Who holds him accountable?”
GOVERNOR: “That’s what the judicial system is for.”
Keel, who has denied every request to be interviewed about this case and the allegations against his agency, would not agree to be interviewed for any of the reports related to the hemp farm raid or the discovery abuses committed in the farmer’s lawsuit against Keel and SLED.
WATCH THE FULL ENCOUNTER BETWEEN JODY BARR AND SLED CHIEF MARK KEEL FROM SEPTEMBER 2022:
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