Corey Jackson, who was elected mayor of Dillon and then suspended by the governor after being charged with 11 counts of first degree sexual exploitation of a minor, was scheduled to have a status conference Monday in General Sessions Court.
The purpose of a status conference is for the State to put its plea offer on the record along with a deadline for the defendant to accept or reject the offer.
Due to a scheduling conflict with his defense counsel yesterday, that hearing was postponed and has been rescheduled for December 6, 2021.
At that time, a date will be set for either a guilty plea or a trial, depending on whether Jackson accepts or rejects the State’s offer.
Since Jackson is an elected official within Dillon County, the Fourth Circuit Solicitor’s Office is not the prosecuting agency for this case. Instead, the Attorney General’s Office is handling the matter for the State.
“While this isn’t a case our office is prosecuting, we have told the Attorney General’s Office and defense counsel that we will make court time available whenever they are ready to move forward with this case,” said Assistant Solicitor Shipp Daniel.
Court officials say this case and many others would have already been disposed by plea or trial, but the COVID-19 pandemic caused court to shut down for more than a year. The South Carolina Supreme Court has just recently allowed jury trials to resume.
Daniel said several major cases his office is handling will be scheduled for trial soon. “The Supreme Court gives Dillon County only about eight weeks of court a year,” said Daniel.
“With the COVID backlog, we’ve got a lot of work to do before our docket numbers are back down to the manageable number we had before the pandemic. But we are working and will have several major trials scheduled for the first part of 2022.”
Dillon has four terms remaining in 2021, and trials involving some of the docket’s oldest cases have been scheduled for each of those terms.