Yesterday, I wrote about evil, about the death penalty, and about why some crimes are so grave that society has no moral choice but to remove the perpetrator permanently. I wrote it not as a politician, but as a prosecutor who has stood in courtrooms for 32 years, looked victims’ families in the eye, and carried the weight of those decisions for the rest of my life.

Today, I want to explain something related, and deeply personal.

It is why I left the Democratic Party.

For most of my career, I served as a Democratic Solicitor. I prosecuted capital cases as a Democrat. I put violent criminals on death row as a Democrat. And for years, I endured criticism from Democrats across South Carolina and from national liberals who told me my views on crime and punishment were outdated, harsh, or immoral.  They even called me a MAGA Democrat. Yet, I still won reelections because Orangeburg Democrats want a conservative tough on violent crime prosecutor as its Solicitor.  The State and National party, however, are a different story.

I never agreed with them, but for a long time I believed the State party still had room for people like me. People who believed justice meant standing with victims. People who believed the law existed to protect innocent lives first.

That belief eventually became impossible to maintain as the State party attacked me for my conservativism, and the national party went nuts.

The final break came when President Joe Biden almost exactly one year ago before right before Christmas, or his staff using an autopen, removed Brandon Council from federal death row.  Before the day was done, he commuted the sentences of 37 of the most evil men in America.  The families of the slain victims received word of the commutations 2 days before Christmas.

Brandon Council walked into a bank in Conway, South Carolina, and brutally murdered two women. Execution-style killings. No hesitation. No mercy. Two lives erased in a matter of moments. Families destroyed forever.

This was not a complicated case. This was not a questionable conviction. This was not a man who acted in confusion or desperation. This was pure, deliberate violence.

And yet, with the stroke of a pen, the Democratic Party’s President decided that Brandon Council deserved mercy more than his victims deserved justice.

That decision told me something I could no longer ignore.

The modern Democratic Party no longer views crime through the eyes of victims, families, or communities. It views crime through the lens of ideology. It is more concerned with the comfort of perpetrators than the safety of the innocent. It treats evil as a policy problem instead of a moral reality.

As a prosecutor, I cannot accept that.

I have seen what happens when violent criminals are given endless chances. I have seen what happens when accountability is delayed, diluted, or denied. I have seen how quickly communities lose faith when the justice system stops taking evil seriously.

And I have seen what happens when government officials signal, intentionally or not, that the lives of victims are secondary to political fashion.

That is not justice. That is abandonment.

Leaving the Democratic Party was not about labels. It was about values. I could not remain aligned with a party that consistently chooses sympathy for killers over protection for victims. I could not support a party that treats the most violent crimes as abstractions, divorced from the human suffering they cause.

When the Brandon Council decision was made, it became clear to me that the party had crossed a line I could not follow.

Justice is not mercy without limits. Compassion is not the absence of accountability. And government exists first to protect the innocent, not to rationalize evil after the fact.

I left the Democratic Party because I refuse to be complicit in a system that lets evil win.

That decision was not political. It was moral.