Lancaster Bar v. Indigent Defense
| Decision Date | 08 December 2008 |
| Docket Number | No. 26568.,26568. |
| Citation | 380 S.C. 219,670 S.E.2d 371 |
| Court | South Carolina Supreme Court |
| Parties | LANCASTER COUNTY BAR ASSOCIATION, Petitioner, v. SOUTH CAROLINA COMMISSION ON INDIGENT DEFENSE, Respondent. |
Francis L. Bell, Jr. and Mitchell A. Norrell, both of Lancaster, for Petitioner.
James Hugh Ryan, III, of Columbia, for Respondent.
We granted petitioner Lancaster County Bar Association's (Lancaster Bar) request to hear this petition for mandamus and for injunction in our original jurisdiction. At issue is whether respondent's (Indigent Defense) construction of S.C.Code Ann. § 17-3-510(A) (Supp.2007), which determines the membership of each circuit's Circuit Public Defender Selection Panel, is correct. We find that it is, and deny Lancaster Bar's request for relief.
The Sixth Judicial Circuit is composed of three counties: Chester, Fairfield, and Lancaster, and its Circuit Public Defender Selection Panel will have five members. § 17-3-510(A). Indigent Defense proposes to allocate the five members of the Sixth Judicial Circuit's Selection Panel as follows: 2 from Lancaster County, 2 from Chester County and 1 from Fairfield County. The Lancaster Bar challenges Indigent Defense's method of calculating the positions, contending that under the statutory formula the correct distribution is: 3 members from Lancaster and 1 each from Chester and Fairfield.
Whether Indigent Defense has properly construed § 17-3-510(A)(1)?
Section 17-3-510(A) provides:
(A) There is created in each judicial circuit in the State a Circuit Public Defender Selection Panel, the membership of which is composed of, and must be elected by, the active, licensed attorneys who reside within the counties of each judicial circuit. Each county in each judicial circuit must be represented by at least one member and the remaining members must be determined by equal weighting of county population based on the most recent decennial census and the most recent annual county appropriations to public defender operations according to the following formula:
(1) percentage of distribution of population plus the percentage of distribution of appropriations for public defender operations divided by two and rounded to the nearest whole number;
(2) the weighted values of each county multiplied by the number of remaining members in each Circuit Public Defender Selection Panel determines the number of additional members each county must have on the panel.
Judicial circuits with three or less counties must have five members. Judicial circuits with four counties must have seven members. Judicial circuits with five counties must have nine members.
After assigning one seat to each county in the Sixth Circuit, two seats must be allocated under the statute's formula.
Lancaster Bar asks the Court to enjoin Indigent Defense from utilizing its interpretation of the statutory formula in § 17-3-510(A)(1) and to mandamus Indigent Defense to use the Lancaster Bar's interpretation instead.
The parties agree on the percentages to be used under the formula, and the method of calculation for the first two steps of the statute:
Chester Fairfield Lancaster
Population: plus 28.7 19.7 51.6
Appropriations: equals 25.2 19.6 55.2
____ ____ ____
divided by 2: 26.95 18.65 53.4
While both parties agree to this point, they disagree on the meaning of the requirement of § 17-3-510(A)(1) that following the division of the combined percentage by two, the result be "rounded to the nearest whole number." Indigent Defense contends that this phrase requires that the percentages be rounded to the nearest whole number, thus Chester becomes 27, Fairfield 19, and Lancaster 53. Lancaster Bar contends, however, that the requirement that after the percentage for each county is obtained, it must be rounded to the next whole number results in the following: Chester 0; Fairfield 0; Lancaster 1.1
Although poorly articulated in the statute, we hold that Indigent Defense's ...
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...construe a statute in a way which leads to an absurd result or renders it meaningless. See Lancaster Cnty. Bar Ass'n v. S.C. Comm'n on Indigent Defense, 380 S.C. 219, 222, 670 S.E.2d 371, 373 (2008) (“In construing a statute, this Court will reject an interpretation which leads to an absurd......
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