♪ music ♪ ♪ ♪ <Gavin> Welcome to This Week in South Carolina.

I'm Gavin Jackson.

The South Carolina task force on human trafficking, released its 2022 annual report and human trafficking continues to be an issue in the state.

We're joined by Attorney General Alan Wilson to discuss that disturbing trend and what is being done to reverse it.

And next week, all eyes will be on the state as the trial of Alex Murdaugh begins in Walterboro.

The Post and Courier's Avery Wilks joins us to break down what we can expect, but first more from this week.

The second week of the legislative session featured budget subcommittee hearings in the House, action on a school voucher bill in the Senate and subcommittee hearings on bills to curb the deadly impact of the synthetic opioid fentanyl has had on the state.

The House Republican caucus, which represents 74 of the 88 Republican members held a press conference Thursday to outline their priorities on economic development, workforce development, cracking down on crime and broader Second Amendment rights, but 14 members of the far right Freedom Caucus have left the Republican caucus over rule changes they don't support.

>> And so this group back here, is 73-74 strong.

We believe that South Carolina has sent us down here to legislate, to make their lives better, and so we're going to move forward with our agenda today, but our doors are open for them to return at any time.

<Gavin> But there were tensions Thursday on the House floor over amendments to a bill that sends the remaining $586 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars to water and sewer infrastructure grants, and half a billion dollars in reserve funds to infrastructure for approved economic development projects.

>> It's so easy to get whipped up into a passion play in here, and you see the Freedom Caucus and you hate them.

And we see the Democrats and we hate them.

And we get into, you know moments where we start clapping and we shouldn't be hating each other.

We shouldn't be really caring that much about caucuses and politics.

What we should focus on here when we are here, ladies and gentlemen, is the people's work and the policy that we are working on.

>> If you want to be successful in this chamber, and we are new in the session this year, I would submit to you that cooperation and collaboration is the path forward, surprising members with amendments at the last minute and then claiming some cloak of nobility is patently absurd and nothing but failure.

If you want to be successful, and if the goals that you say you espouse are genuine, then there are ways to do that.

I don't know why that is strikes some members as difficult to learn that, but working with others is the path to success.

<Gavin> The House and Senate returned on Tuesday for another week of lawmaking, and the governor gives his State of the State address to both chambers Wednesday evening.

Attorney General Alan Wilson, thank you for joining me to discuss the human trafficking report from 2022.

<Attorney General Wilson> It's great to be with you.

Thank you for having me on.

<Gavin> So before we get into this report from the Human Trafficking Task Force, Attorney General, just tell us about how y'all define human trafficking and maybe what are some more prevalent forms it takes in our state.

<Attorney General Wilson> Well, obviously, the definition of human trafficking can be found in statute that we get passed in 2012.

You know, obviously, before 2012, there was no human trafficking statute in South Carolina.

South Carolina was ranked very poorly among states in this country who had laws on the books and we didn't have any laws on the books so obviously, we didn't fare very well.

Since 2012, with the advent of the human trafficking statutes, and the task force that followed in the reports that we have done, South Carolina is now one of the best states in the country for identifying, prosecuting and combating human trafficking.

Now to your question about how do you define human trafficking, just to sum it up, it is basically forcing people into either labor or sex acts through fraud, or force or coercion.

I mean, that is just a layperson's summation of it.

And obviously, the statute is very specific as to the conduct, but what was very interesting is when we first got the law passed, it was very difficult to educate law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, medical services providers, and people out there in the world that dealt with this kind of stuff.

It was just kind of a very new concept of folks.

Ten years into our efforts, we've seen a market improvement across the entire spectrum of people who are engaged in the fight against human trafficking, on understanding what it is and how to identify it, how to treat it, how to deal with it, and how to combat it.

And so we're really excited about the efforts we've made this last decade.

<Gavin> So, a lot happening over the past decade.

Are things getting better in the state?

<Attorney General Wilson> Well, when you look at statistics to your question, are things getting better in the state, we're getting better at seeing it and because we're getting better at seeing it and identifying it and going after it, you're seeing more of it.

So oftentimes when we release our annual report, you'll see that the top five counties, or the top five areas that we're seeing or the, you know, we're seeing more of it.

And so when you say we're seeing it, people are like, "Oh my goodness, there's more of it happening."

But I always tell folks, that just means there's more recognition of it.

It doesn't mean that just because a county isn't identified as a top county of human trafficking activity, doesn't mean that activity is not occurring in the county.

It just means that there are people recognizing it and reporting it through to the hotline or to local law enforcement.

So we're getting better at recognizing it, which means we're seeing a lot more of it, which means we're seeing the statistics of human trafficking going up.

More people are reporting it.

More victims are being identified.

More charges are being brought.

More cases are being disposed of, but that doesn't mean necessarily that there's more human trafficking occurring today than 10 years ago.

It just means that 10 years ago, it was occurring, and no one was seeing it or doing anything about it.

<Gavin> Attorney General Wilson, we saw in this past report, the 2022 annual report that there was a 458% increase in labor trafficking victims with a 44% increase in victims who identified as Latin X.

Pretty shocking there.

What can you guys point to?

Maybe - some motives behind those numbers increasing so drastically.

<Attorney General Wilson> Well, when you look at the sharp increase in labor trafficking, I think a lot of that could be to the very thing that we were talking about earlier is that when people think of human trafficking, they think of sex trafficking.

Right?

You know, they think of someone being the snatch and grab, or the coercion, to forcing someone into prostitution, but people don't realize that there's a labor trafficking area in our state, and people who are the easiest to prey on for labor trafficking purposes are people where there's a language barrier, maybe they're here, illegally, Latinos, people from south of the border, and other countries below there, they're coming to our state.

They don't speak good English, or any English at all.

They don't have the ability to communicate.

They're also afraid to report to law enforcement authorities, because they're afraid that they will be, you know, taken away and returned back to their country of origin, and so there probably wasn't a lot of, as many reports on it, because people didn't recognize it as a crime, but also because the victims of the crime themselves were like in the sex trafficking arena.

People who were prostituting wouldn't go report that they were a trafficking victim, because usually they're engaged in illicit crimes themselves.

So that is why they're easy to exploit.

So that's why I believe you were seeing an uptick in labor trafficking, because we're seeing - we're educating people about it.

We're seeing the effects of it more frequently, and then we're able to identify it as such.

<Gavin> So that does make it difficult, then when people want to speak out against this, I mean, because if you are an illegal immigrant, could you face deportation, if you do come out and say, I've been, you know, working for nothing or for low wages?

I mean, how does that work for folks who, who want to speak out?

<Attorney General Wilson> So, in our human trafficking statutes, we have a provision where you can - it's called a T Visa, and I tell people, we have to distinguish - there are two issues at play here.

There's immigration issues, you know, I'm in favor of very robust enforced immigration policy that is, you know, you close the border, and the only people who come in to come in the legal way, in a documented way, and then we plug those holes, and then there's the issue of human trafficking.

I tell people all the time that when I discuss human trafficking, if someone is a victim of it, whether in the labor trafficking arena, or the sex trafficking arena, our wall through a T Visa allows you, if you are demonstrated to be a victim of human trafficking, you can stay in this country, you can come forward and be placed on a T Visa, and the purpose of that is that what's more important to us is eliminating the trafficker than removing the victim from our country.

And so we try to take the fear of reporting this evil, this insidious crime.

We want to take the fear of victims from reporting it away from them, and so for those people who are here, illegally or in an undocumented fashion, they need to know that if they are a truly a victim of human trafficking, and they are identified as a victim, then there is a legal way for them to remain here while we prosecute this case, then we can onboard them through legal ways, and that is a partnership with the federal government.

But at the end of the day, human trafficking is modern day slavery by another name, whether it's sex, or commercial sex or labor, we want people to feel free to come forward.

I would like to add one thing to that.

Sometimes victims are afraid to come forward because they might find themselves being engaged in illicit activity that might come along with human trafficking, but oftentimes, there are people and I've spoken to victims of human trafficking, I like to refer to them as survivors, who during the time of their trafficking, do not realize that they were a victim of human trafficking.

And I found that very interesting.

You know, I was speaking to a woman who was watching the report on the news one time and realized that it was a report about human trafficking activity.

And she realized, oh my god, I'm a victim of human trafficking because she had started off in a relationship with a man, which led to her helping him sell drugs, and when they couldn't sell the drugs, it became, you know, you need to help pay for the family, so you got to sell yourself.

And it was kind of like a Romeo type situation.

She wanted to please the person she was in loved with, but the second that she said no, it became a violent relationship, and so she continued the activity because she didn't want to face the violence that he was putting on her, but she did not assign herself as a victim of human trafficking.

To her she was a willing participant, and that is what's so crazy about this crime.

<Gavin> Attorney General Wilson, we have a couple of minutes left, I want to ask you about just these top five counties that we saw reported for human trafficking, Greenville, Charleston, Richland, where we are and Horry and Spartanburg, and then also, when we talk about these folks coming across or coming to our country for labor purposes, do you think a lot of that is also tied to the border crisis as well, when we look at some of these top counties where people are getting located to and, and also with the crisis we continue to see at the border?

<Attorney General Wilson> I think you can always, to some degree go to the border, but I also like to tell people that human trafficking isn't just an international crime, it's a local crime.

A lot of the human trafficking that we deal with occurs, you know, in Main Street America, when people think of human trafficking, they think of some Hollywood production where some girl is backpacking through Europe and get, you know, get snatched in a van and taken away or is in some southeastern Asian country or whatever, but it happens here, and it doesn't happen by people in criminal enterprises, like gangs or the mafia, or cartels.

It happens by just other citizens exploiting other human beings.

And so I want to break through the stereotype of what human trafficking is.

It isn't just a Hollywood crime.

So I don't want to assign it as just a purely a border issue.

It is a human rights issue here in our own backyard, to the top five counties.

I tell people all the time, if you look at human trafficking as a worldwide phenomenon, and it is.

There is 100 - there are about 45 million victims of human trafficking a year, a $150 billion a year industry worldwide, with the United States being the number one destination for human trafficking.

When you look at Atlanta and Charlotte, they are two of the top 20 Human Trafficking hubs for human trafficking in America, and then South Carolina sits nestled comfortably right between those two hubs.

You have the I-85 corridor going from Charlotte to Atlanta.

You have the I-95 corridor along the coast, and of course, you have the I-77 corridor from Charlotte to Columbia.

I believe that those are potential arteries for this type of criminal behavior.

<Gavin> And really quickly, sir, what can folks do to recognize this or what resources are available for folks who are already trapped right now?

<Attorney General Wilson> Well, first off, if you see anything that you think looks suspicious, in the vein of human trafficking activity, the way someone is being treated, sometimes the symptoms of human trafficking could be illicit drug use, outrageous behaviors.

It could be hints that people are dropping along the way.

Don't assume that it's just some teenager being surly, or some adult dealing with a drug addiction.

Talk to somebody.

Report it to somebody and if you see someone being treated a particular way by another person, the way they're being, you know, maybe slapped around or beat up or coerced in some way, report it to law enforcement.

If you see something, say something.

That is the number one thing we want to do.

Say something because even if you're wrong, law enforcement can come in there and assess the situation and make that determination, but if you never say anything, if you're not our eyes and ears out there in the world, the law enforcement in my office can never assess it to make a determination on how to proceed.

<Gavin> And Attorney General Wilson, I'd be negligent.

If I didn't ask you about the state's case about against Alex Murdaugh, which starts on Monday.

Just tell me really quickly how confident you are that you guys will get a conviction against Alex Murdaugh in that double murder case.

<Attorney General Wilson> All I'm gonna say about the case is that I'm very proud of the team that we have put together on this case.

It's getting a lot of notoriety.

I've been heavily involved with members of our team and our staff as we prepare for this very high profile case.

I'm not going to make any comments about the substance of the case or any predictions about how, you know, how we feel it'll turn out but we feel very comfortable with our theory, and we're, we believe that the evidence will speak for itself when it's presented in a court of law.

<Gavin> Very good, a lot of important issues that y'all are following right there.

And that's Attorney General Alan Wilson, thank you so much for joining us, sir.

<Attorney General Wilson> Thank you very much.

<Gavin> Avery Wilks is the chief investigative reporter at the Post and Courier's Columbia Bureau.

And he's been covering the Murdaugh saga for several years, and he'll be down in Walterboro covering this trial, and I want to talk to you now Avery about just what we're going to be seeing take place over the next coming days and weeks down in Walterboro with this trial, but thank you for being with us.

<Avery> Yeah, great to be here.

<Gavin> And you're billing this as the trial of the century in South Carolina.

I think a lot of people are agreeing with you on that, because we're seeing just you know, over the past few years, just how this has been playing out in South Carolina, which, you know, started with Paul Murdaugh, the youngest Murdaugh being accused of killing Mallory Beach in a boating accident, and then going forward we saw the actual death of Paul and his mother Maggie in June 2021.

Since then, we know that the father, Alex Murdaugh has been indicted in July 2022.

And now we're here this trial on the precipice of it.

And Avery, just kind of fill in the gaps here.

That was a very rudimentary overview, but of course, there's so much more at play here.

We're talking about fraud.

We're talking about motive.

What's going on right now?

What are we going to be seeing play out over the next coming weeks?

<Avery> Sure, it's hard to overstate how shocking this whole case has been.

Alex Murdaugh is a prominent or was a prominent trial attorney, former president of the South Carolina Trial Lawyers Association.

You know, he was an influential political donor.

And he was just someone that everyone in that corner of South Carolina felt like they knew and, you know, came from a long line of elected prosecutors, and the Murdaugh name for a long time was synonymous with law enforcement in that portion of the state.

So, you know, to hear that Murdaugh was considered a person of interest in the shocking slayings of his wife and son was, frankly, quite shocking for a lot of people.

And then, of course, there were a rolling series of indictments that came out of the state investigations into the Murdaugh family that accused him of surreptitiously stealing money from his clients, from his law partners, from other people like the family of his housekeeper who trusted him.

Ultimately, those tallied up to allegations that he stole nearly $9 million from those people who trusted him, as well as charges alleging money laundering and drug trafficking and insurance fraud.

It was just this shocking and precipitous fall from grace for Murdaugh, that has really culminated in this trial.

That's going to start on January 23rd and, essentially, you know, this is a financial crimes case, a white collar crimes case with a double murder strapped onto it, and prosecutors allege that Murdaugh was desperate in June 2021.

He knew that there were a couple of inquiries that we're going to expose his myriad of financial crimes that he'd been doing for the past decade.

And so in a frantic attempt to distract and delay from those inquiries, and to try to buy himself time to cover up his wrongdoing, he shot and killed his wife and son.

And that's going to be a big part of the state's case that we're going to see at this trial.

It's going to be trying to explain to a jury why a person would go so far as to kill their wife and son.

And frankly, that's something that the defense attorneys are going to be trying to hammer against the entire trial, and they're going to be saying that, that motive is implausible and illogical, and that the state doesn't have enough evidence to prove that Murdaugh was the killer.

<Gavin> Avery it's been a wild ride.

The media coverage has been extensive with people like yourself and others and all of us seemingly following along in real time to this real life true crime story as it played out in South Carolina.

It's almost kind of out of Hollywood, unfortunately, But it took some 13 minutes to indict Alex.

And during that time, he apparently even staged his own shooting to make it look like there was an attempt on his life.

We're talking about this fraud situation.

What are Murdaugh's attorneys saying, and how are they claiming his innocence at this point?

<Avery> Yeah, you know, I wouldn't go so far as to say that they are claiming his innocence, you know, broadly, because he has admitted to some of the financial crimes.

He's apologized to his law firm.

but they do insist that he was not involved and had nothing to do with the slayings of his wife and son.

And they know that they are just going to have to convince one juror, not 12 for acquittal, but just one, that there's reasonable doubt that that Murdaugh killed his wife and son.

And so I think their strategy is going to be to try to poke holes in the state's case, and in the state's theory.

You know, we've heard a lot about what kind of evidence potentially ties Murdaugh to this crime.

You know, you hear about the video on Paul's phone.

And there's GPS data.

And there's all this sort of circumstantial evidence that places Murdaugh at the scene of the crime in a short time before Alex, and before Maggie and Paul were allegedly killed.

And so what they're going to be doing is trying to essentially, poke holes in that evidence, you know, to say that, you know, this GPS data is junk science, or it's faulty, or, you know, the forensic analysis used wrong assumptions.

And so they're not necessarily going to be out in this trial to prove their client's innocence because it's pretty clear from all the other alleged criminality that Murdaugh was not necessarily the best guy.

But, you know, they had been adamant that despite all of his other failings and shortcomings and wrongdoings, that he was not someone who would have killed his wife and his youngest son.

<Gavin> So Avery along that line, when you're talking about, you know, the quality of his character, we talked about this alleged fraud, and some of this fraud and settlements that we've seen play out, you talked about apologies on Alex's part, how much of that is going to be admissible?

How much are we going to hear?

How much is that jury going to hear over the coming weeks in this trial?

<Avery> That's a great question.

Gavin, it's one we don't yet have the answer to.

It is going to be a major battle, and already has been in pre-trial motions.

Before this case gets going, we're obviously going to have to start the trial with jury selection.

But then the two sides are going to have to argue before Judge Clifton Newman about how big a role those financial crimes should play in this trial.

The state says the financial crimes are critical to their case.

They're crucial to providing the motive to showing why he would be so desperate as to kill his wife and son, but the defense is trying to exclude as much, if not all of that as possible, and they claim that, you know, the state's theory of the case is illogical and implausible, and that it doesn't make sense that someone would commit a murder in order to cover up from some financial crimes.

But, and so a big part of their effort is going to be trying to show that the state doesn't have a strong case, in that, because they don't have a strong case tying Murdaugh to the murders, they are instead going to just show that he's a really bad guy who deserves to go to prison, if not for the murders then for his other wrongdoings.

So that was something that Murdaugh attorney, Jim Griffin, you know, got up and kind of started shouting in the courtroom during one of the most recent hearings, you know, he's just saying, they're just trying to show he's a bad guy.

He's a bad dude, judge, and he should go to prison.

So that's going to be, you know, a big part of their attempt to try to get this this evidence excluded.

And, you know, frankly, since it is such a big part of the case, the extent to which the financial crimes are allowed in as evidence is really going to dictate the course of this trial.

So that's going to be something that, once that issue gets hashed out, you know, it's going to change the way that we think about this trial and how we predict the trial's going to go.

<Gavin> Avery we have about three minutes left there, and you just laid out a lot of key points that we need to be watching for, but when we talk separately from the murder trial, which will take several weeks, there are still pending fraud cases against Alex.

So you know, if something happens in this murder trial, in which he's not convicted of that double homicide, then we could see jail time, regardless as a result of these fraud charges.

<Avery> Yeah, look, this is not a trial to determine whether Murdaugh is going to spend the rest of his life or most of the rest of his life in prison.

He is.

You know, he is facing 99 state grand jury charges, not including the murder counts, alleging, like you said, insurance fraud, money laundering, drug trafficking, you know, conspiracy, you know, fraud, embezzlement.

I mean, every financial crime that you can think of, he's facing it, and prosecutors have already said they're going to see life in prison on those cases, and from what I understand that it's a pretty open and shut case, you know, there are bank records.

He's already seen one of his alleged accomplices, Russell Laffitte convicted on all counts in federal court in November, just for helping him carry out some of those schemes.

So again, this is not going to be a question of determining whether Murdaugh goes to prison.

He's already in jail.

He's going to be going to prison for a while most likely.

This is really, at this point more about whether he is determined to have killed his wife and son.

And as I understand it, that's very important to him.

He's not going to plead guilty on these counts.

He does not want to be associated and to go down in the historical record as being the killer of his wife and son.

So again, this is not really going to impact the amount of time he spends in prison, in my opinion.

<Gavin> So Avery with two minutes, how big of a window is this going to be for the Attorney General's office, Alan Wilson's office.

We just spoke with him about a separate issue, but also want to kind of get your read on the importance of this case, and then also maybe one or two things besides the role that the fraud will play that you'll be watching over the coming weeks.

<Avery> I can't think of a more high profile criminal case that the Attorney General's office has handled, you know, in recent years, at least since I've been around and paying attention.

You know, this is for state Grand Jury chief prosecutor Creighton Waters, you know, he has handled a ton of big cases.

He's handled white collar crime and public corruption.

You know, he helped oust House Speaker Bobby Harrell from the General Assembly, and even with a resume like that, people in the office, call this case apex for him, because it really does represent the pinnacle of their career.

So, to that extent, you know, whether they are successful in convicting Alex or whether this all blows up in their face.

You know, there's a lot riding on this.

There's personal reputations.

There's careers.

You know, so I think, in addition to obviously, the high stakes for Alex Murdaugh, you know, this case is going to, for better or worse define, you know, the careers and the legacy of Attorney General Alan Wilson and of some of his top prosecutors who are really passionate about it, and who are, you know, who have really sort of hitched their wagon to this case, so that will certainly be something to watch as well.

<Gavin> Gotcha.

We'll be watching with you Avery.

I know you'll be in that courtroom.

You'll be following this closely.

We'll be checking in with you from time to time.

But a lot to look forward to.

This will be something that will be captivating not just the state, the country, but also probably the world as it plays out live over the next coming weeks.

And that's Avery Wilks.

He's with the Post and Courier.

He'll be covering the Murdaugh trial with other reporters.

We look forward to your coverage.

Thanks, Avery.

<Avery> Thanks for having me.

>> To stay up to date with the latest news throughout the week, check out the South Carolina Lede.

It's a podcast that I host on Tuesdays and Saturdays that you can find on South Carolina public radio.org or wherever you find podcasts for South Carolina ETV, I'm Gavin Jackson, Be well, South Carolina.

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