Court Opinion

ID: 9569823
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:17:50.361226+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:04:07.129780
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE BURNETT
CONCURRING:
While I agree with this Court’s ultimate legal conclusion, I write separately to address the conduct of DHEC in this matter for fear that it is emblematic of the agency and the manner in which it manages our State’s citizens.1
To demonstrate the impropriety of DHEC’s actions a fuller recitation of the facts is necessary. Mr. Peake and his attorney met -with DHEC officials, including Ms. Hunter-Shaw, in August of 1996, to discuss the operation of the private water treatment plant. At that time, Ms. Hunter-Shaw suggested Mr. Peake deed the sewer system to the Town of Ninety Six. Mr. Peake, on the advice of his attorney, *507initially declined to do so for two obvious reasons. First, deeding the sewer system would result in the loss of a $325,000 investment in the property. Second, Mr. Peake was concerned such a transfer could be considered as evidence of guilt in any subsequent criminal prosecution.
Ms. Hunter-Shaw did not inform Mr. Peake or his attorney that she had recommended investigation for possible criminal violations. At the time Ms. Hunter-Shaw sought to persuade Mr. Peake to deed the plant to the city, she began the process for Mr. Peake’s subsequent indictment on criminal charges.
Despite several subsequent personal and telephone conferences, Ms. Hunter-Shaw never informed Mr. Peake’s attorney that DHEC was recommending criminal prosecution because she “didn’t think it was anything that he needed to know.” Mr. Peake’s attorney, now a Master-In-Equity in Spartan-burg County, testified that he would not have advised his client to deed over the plant if the concern of criminal prosecution had not been resolved. Further, the attorney testified of his telephone conversations with Ms. Hunter-Shaw, which included repeated assurances that if Mr. Peake deeded the plant to the Town of Ninety Six then the “entire matter” would go away.
Of no solace to Mr. Peake is the observation that had the Attorney General’s Office criminally charged him earlier than it had, or even if DHEC ever directly notified him they recommended he be criminally charged, this case would not have been resolved as it was. Mr. Peake under criminal indictment would be afforded substantial rights against what could only be deemed prosecutorial misconduct. In keeping the details of a criminal prosecution secret while maintaining the prospect of settlement which could “make the whole thing go away” DHEC sought to gain control of Mr. Peake’s property while keeping alive the option of criminal prosecution.
To Mr. Peake the settlement offer by DHEC must be accepted to conclude civil and potential criminal proceedings. In exchange for surrendering the $325,000 investment in the property, Mr. Peake reasonably concluded the threats of prosecution by the State would be ended. Instead the “settlement” effected the surrender of the opportunity to obtain any return on his investment while still being held accountable for *508possible criminal charges. The settlement was all the more troublesome because the act of surrendering the land could be viewed as an acknowledgement of guilt.
At best this case illustrates the problems which can occur when a governmental organization entrusts the enforcement of complicated statutes to those not trained to understand the import of telling a citizen “do this and all your trouble will go away.”
At worst the facts here demonstrate a cultural environment at a State agency to abuse those the agency is entrusted to serve in order to obtain their idea of maximum results. It must be remembered, however, that government is not business and DHEC does not exist to defeat competitors. Instead, it is a State agency entrusted with the stewardship of. the people’s environment. This stewardship means they must not only zealously guard the environment, but must also be zealously on guard against a tendency to abuse its powers for what it considers to be the greater good.
Although the Attorney General retains prosecutorial authority, agency responsibilities must be completed with openness, candor and integrity. The matter was not something removed from Ms. Hunter-Shaw’s control or on the periphery of her responsibilities. The decision to proceed criminally against Mr. Peake came directly from a referral by Ms. Hunter-Shaw. This calculated conduct may have allowed DHEC to effect transfer of the plant to a town and allow the State to seek a criminal indictment, but Mr. Peake was inequitably treated.
While Ms. Hunter-Shaw is not a prosecutor, she should be aware of the spirit and Rules of Professional Conduct governing prosecutors. See Rule 407, SCACR. Importantly, a prosecutor is charged with the responsibility of being “a minister of justice and not simply that of an advocate ____ [t]his responsibility carries with it specific obligations to see that the defendant is accorded procedural justice.” Id., hist, n.
It is the rule of a prosecuting attorney, and those in government whose actions ultimately determine whether someone will be deprived of liberty or property, to:
avoid the role of a partisan, eager to convict ... [to] deal fairly with the accused as well as the other participants____ *509to set a tone of fairness and impartiality, and while he may and should vigorously pursue the State’s case, in so doing he must not abandon the quasi-judicial role with which he is cloaked under the law.
State v. Boyd, 160 W.Va. 234, 233 S.E.2d 710 (1977).
The United States Supreme Court in addressing the prosecutor’s role provided a caution all government officials would do well to heed:
[He] is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer.
Berger v. United States, 295 U.S. 78, 88, 55 S.Ct. 629, 633, 79 L.Ed. 1314, 1321 (1935).
Although this result will be of little assistance to Mr. Peake, perhaps State agency personnel will be constantly cognizant of the duty to, not only zealously fulfill their responsibility, but do so with equity and integrity.
TOAL, C.J., and WALLER, J., concur.

. This case brings to mind these insights concerning governments. In moments of content we are apt to invoke Henry Clay's words that "Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees; and both the trust and the trustees are created for the benefit of the people.” John Bartlett, Henry Clay Speech at Ashland, KY, in March 1829, Familiar Quotations, (10th ed.1919), available at http://www.bartleby.com/100/ 348.2.html. Yet the facts of this case bring out the harsher inclination to exclaim "[t]he nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.’ ” James B. Simpson, "President Ronald W. Reagan Press Conference on Aug. 12, 1986,” Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1988), available at http://www.bartleby.com/63/56/356.html.