Thompson v. South Carolina
Annotate this CaseFrom 1998 to 2000, an armed perpetrator committed six robberies of hotels in Lexington, Richland, Berkeley, and Charleston counties. During each of these robberies, the perpetrator entered the hotel, held the clerk at gunpoint, restrained the clerk with either duct tape or rope, and stole money out of the hotel safe and till. After an investigation, the police arrested Clifford Thompson for these robberies, and a grand jury indicted him on multiple counts of armed robbery and kidnapping. Thompson appealed the court of appeals' decision to affirm the circuit court's refusal to grant Thompson's request for declaratory judgments finding that: (1) his kidnapping offenses did not involve a sexual element; and (2) Thompson would not need to register as a sex offender upon his release from prison in 2020. Upon review, the Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals' decision affirming the circuit court's refusal to address whether Thompson's kidnapping offenses did not involve a sexual element, and remand for a hearing on this issue. However, because the issue of whether Thompson will be required to register as a sex offender upon his release from prison is not yet ripe, and because the SCDC's classification of Thompson as a sex offender in prison was subject to internal grievance procedures, the Court affirmed the court of appeals' decision with respect to those two issues, and allowed Thompson to file a grievance with the SCDC to become reclassified in the SCDC's system.
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