A domestic violence arrest in Myrtle Beach can happen fast, even during a family vacation, and it can start with something as ordinary as an argument. Below, Greg McCollum, founder of the Complete Legal Defense Team, walks through a real-world example of how one of these cases can unfold, from the initial 911 call through the court process.
Frequently Asked Questions
What if you’re arrested in Myrtle Beach and charged with domestic violence? What to do and expect.
George was on vacation in Myrtle Beach, staying at a hotel with his wife, his mother-in-law, his brother-in-law, and his children. He went out with his brother-in-law, and they went to a bar. They stayed out too late.
His wife wasn’t happy about where he went, so when he got back, she started arguing with him because she was upset that he had been out drinking while she was at the hotel with the kids. One thing led to another, and he was arguing with his wife. His mother-in-law jumped into the argument, and his brother-in-law was there as well.
It seemed like a family argument, but what happened next was that he was arrested and charged with domestic violence. He was arrested because his seven-year-old daughter woke up, came down the stairs, and the natural thing to do in that situation was to take his daughter away from the fight, to get himself away from it, and to deescalate it.
So he did what was natural: he picked her up, held her, comforted her, and walked out the door. He was just going to leave and go a short distance away to let things calm down.
That wasn’t good enough, because his wife was mad. She wanted to argue with him and keep the escalation going, because that’s what happens when people are mad. So she followed him down across the parking lot, away from the hotel, and the police showed up.
Why did the police show up? Nothing was really happening, it’s not illegal to be in an argument. Maybe somebody called the police, maybe she called the police, but the police showed up.
Once the police arrive, they’re there to investigate, and the presumption is that something illegal is happening and they need to arrest somebody. In every scenario where the police show up, their mindset is that there’s going to be a defendant and there’s going to be a victim.
The wife started thinking, based on the police questions, whether something was going to happen to her. George was thinking about what was going to happen to him, to his daughter, and to his wife. He didn’t want his wife and himself both to get arrested, because then what would happen to their children? One thing led to another, and the wife implied, or said, that he had assaulted her.
She claimed he threw a bottle or a glass of seltzer at her. The police looked at her and believed she had a mark on her face under her eye, nothing that required medical attention, nothing that proved George even did it, but that’s what they were looking for. They’re looking to arrest somebody.
In South Carolina, police are required to arrest somebody for every domestic violence call. For every single domestic violence call, under the law in South Carolina, they’re supposed to decide who is the primary aggressor and arrest that person and take them to jail.
The police determined, fairly randomly and arbitrarily, that George was the aggressor. It’s a very faulty process, and the police often have no real idea what’s going on, but they’re there. They’re not very patient, and sometimes they’re aggravated, so they arrested George.
They told him to turn around and put his hands behind his back. They cuffed him and walked him to the patrol car. It’s usually very embarrassing, because there are typically multiple cars there with blue lights flashing on the side of the road. They may stand him up by the car and talk to him for ten or fifteen minutes before eventually putting him in the car and driving him to jail.
At the jail, he’s booked, his property is taken from him, including his phone, and he spends the night in jail on a steel bed with a thin, flimsy mattress. In the morning, he goes in front of a judge and bond is set. Most people don’t have a lawyer with them at that point, though it is possible to reach out and get a lawyer there in the morning.
In a domestic violence case, there is usually automatically a no-contact order, which means that when George gets out of jail, he literally cannot go back to the hotel where he was staying with his wife and family, and he cannot call her on the phone or have any contact with her, or he violates his bond.
His wife is not restricted from contacting him, but if she came to the jail to pick him up and drive him home and police saw that, he would be violating the no-contact order, giving them a basis to arrest him.
In some cases, wives and spouses come to the bond hearing and say they want the charges dropped, but that doesn’t mean the charges will be dropped, they won’t be. In some cases, the wife can say she doesn’t want a no-contact order, that it was a mistake, that this isn’t what they were looking for, and the judge may or may not agree. Typically, though, he has to have a police escort just to go get a suitcase.
His family has to make separate travel arrangements, and he has to travel back separately as well, since legally he isn’t even supposed to go back home with them. It’s a little hard to enforce if he’s from another state, since South Carolina doesn’t have jurisdiction there, even though he’d be breaking the law by violating the bond order. The firm would never advise a client to do that, though some people disregard the order anyway.
After that, he has a court date, and he may have to explain the situation to his employer. If he has a job of any importance, and all jobs are important, this could cause him to lose that job, which means he no longer has the income to hire a lawyer or to support two households while obeying the court order to stay separate and apart. This creates a real problem for people.
A good thing to do in that situation is to contact Complete Legal Defense Team. Anyone can contact any law firm, but this firm is set up for what it calls an “arrest emergency.” If this happens to someone, or is happening while they’re reading this, they can call the firm 24/7 and talk to somebody. The firm will have somebody at the jail in the morning to try to avoid the no-contact order, or at least to resolve that problem before it’s created.
If it’s already happened and someone hires the firm afterward, the firm can go to court, usually within a few days or a week or two, and get the order modified, assuming the spouse wants it modified. If she doesn’t want it modified and wants the no-contact order to stand, then it stands and there’s nothing that can be done about it.
At that point, one of two things happens. There’s a separate domestic violence court date for these kinds of charges. If the wife wants the case dismissed and cooperates with the firm, she fills out an affidavit and some forms, and may go to her own separate court date, where she’s interviewed and asked whether the charges should be dropped.
If the prosecutor is willing to accept that as a resolution, the case could be over within a few weeks. It gets dismissed, and the firm shows how to get it expunged, so the record is gone, except for anything on social media.
If the wife doesn’t want the charge dropped, it becomes a much longer process, with the normal motions and court dates. Whether the case goes to trial depends on whether the prosecutor pursues it and whether the wife is willing to travel back from another state to testify, because if there’s a trial, she has to appear in court under her own power, at her own expense.
The state won’t fly her back for a simple domestic violence case, so she would have to book a hotel, get off work, come to court, and testify. Even if she does that, it doesn’t mean all hope is lost or that he’s going to be convicted, because the evidence will either hold up or it won’t, and there are a lot of factors involved.
That’s what a domestic violence arrest can look like in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina: someone goes out, comes home, people in the house are unhappy, an argument starts, and he tries to do something positive by removing himself from the situation and protecting his daughter. One thing leads to another, the police show up, and everything goes wrong.
This happens in Myrtle Beach on a regular basis, and it’s something the firm sees often. Anyone facing this kind of situation, where it threatens their career, their livelihood, their marriage, and more, can reach out to the Complete Legal Defense Team, which defends the accused who have a lot to lose.
With nearly 30 years of experience and a background as a former prosecutor, Greg McCollum brings a distinct perspective to how domestic violence cases are built, and how they can be defended, in South Carolina. His firm, the Complete Legal Defense Team, focuses on defending people across Myrtle Beach who are facing serious criminal charges.
If you have questions about domestic violence arrests in Myrtle Beach, call the Greg McCollum Complete Legal Defense Team at (843) 626-5480. Consultations are confidential.
