SC Supreme Court upholds decision to overturn conviction in 2012 St. Helena Island shootout
The South Carolina Supreme Court has upheld a lower court decision to overturn a manslaughter conviction for a St. Helena man in a deadly shootout a decade ago on St. Helena Island.
The shooting occurred June 21, 2012, on the parking lot of nightclub Midnight Soul Patrol and led to the conviction of Joseph Bowers, 37, of St. Helena, in 2014.
At trial, prosecutors refuted Bowers’ argument of self-defense and said his decision to pick up a gun and engage in “mutual combat” was deliberate.
“The court of appeals reversed the convictions because the trial court should not have charged the doctrine of mutual combat to the jury,” the Supreme Court said in its ruling.
Bowers originally was charged with two counts of murder in the deaths of Michael Douglas Morgan, 27, of Beaufort and Dante Kendall Bailey, 34, of Ridgeland. He was also charged on two counts of attempted murder, but a 12-person jury found him not guilty on those charges and instead said he was guilty of manslaughter in Morgan’s death and assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature for one of the men who was injured.
The charge for Bailey’s murder was ultimately dropped and Bowers was found not guilty for the attempted murder of the injured person, who was not named.
Lucas Miles Morgan, Michael Morgan’s brother, also was charged in the shootout but found not guilty of the two murder and two attempted murder charges. There was a hung jury for Morgan’s voluntary manslaughter charge in Bailey’s death, meaning the jury could not reach a decision, and he was granted a mistrial.
In 2014, Bowers was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature and possession of a weapon in the commission of a violent crime.
Nightclub shooting
At around 1:30 a.m., Bowers and his friend, Bailey, were at the nightclub when two arguments escalated into a shootout. Bowers was at the club with approximately 75 others when Michael Douglas Morgan fired a flare gun, authorities said. The shooting began and Bailey was hit. A witness said they saw Bowers holding Bailey’s gun while trying to help get him into a car. Another witness said that after the shooting began, “four or five men” went up to Morgan while shooting and he was hit. Morgan and Bailey were killed in the shooting while two others were injured, according to previous reporting.
Bowers told investigators he did not shoot a gun and was later recorded on a prison phone call with his fiancee saying, “I ain’t killed the boy, I only shot the boy.”
Morgan was 27 years old at the time of the shooting and a father of three. He was born and raised in Beaufort, according to his obituary.
Bailey was 34 at the time and grew up in Ridgeland. He had two children, according to his obituary.
Court proceedings
At trial in 2014, Bowers’ then-defense attorney Trasi Campbell, who now works as an assistant solicitor, argued that he was acting in self-defense when he picked up Bailey’s gun and began shooting. Assistant Solicitor Hunter Swanson said Bowers’ decision to engage in mutual combat was deliberate.
Mutual combat in South Carolina holds every participant in a shootout responsible for all of the bullets fired, regardless of whose gun they came from. The “rarely cited doctrine” was also used in 2020 by the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office to convict two men in the death of an 8-year-old boy on Hilton Head Island in 2012.
Despite objections from the defense, the state asked the court to “charge the jury on the doctrine of mutual combat to negate the self-defense claim,” the high court said in Wednesday’s announcement.
Bowers’ attorney, Robert Michael Dudek, a lawyer with the S.C. Commission on Indigent Defense, argued in appeal that the prosecution was wrong to “instruct” the jury on charges during the trial because “there is no evidence to support either charge.” The appeals court agreed.
The state contended that it did not challenge the appeals court decision regarding mutual combat not being applicable in this instance, but that it did not agree that that would require overturning the conviction of the assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature charge.
Dudek could not immediately be reached for comment Wednesday by the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
Bowers was still in custody Wednesday at the S.C. Department of Corrections’ Manning Reentry/Work Release Center in Columbia, jail records show.
This story was originally published June 29, 2022 at 2:45 PM.
