It was June 4, 2002. Late afternoon. At a busy intersection on Five Chop Road, multiple gunshots rang out. A woman lay dying in the street.

What had begun as a typical Tuesday afternoon turned into a surreal scene of mayhem. Witnesses at the intersection that day said a man bolted out of a car while brandishing a shotgun.

Unbelieving passersby watched as the shotgun barked. Once. Twice. Three times and more.

A woman exited her SUV in an apparent effort to flee the hail of gunfire. The shotgun barked again. And again. And again.

After recovering from what police say was a self-inflicted gunshot wound, then-35-year-old Mark Prezzy was charged with the murder of his estranged wife, Nicole Prezzy. The 28-year-old Vance woman had just left her job at a local manufacturing plant when the shooting occurred.

Although the case is 3-1/2 years old, it is one of several murder cases more than one year old expected to come to trial this year, 1st Circuit Solicitor David Pascoe said.

“I’m going to do everything possible to make sure that case is called this year,” Pascoe said. “I’ve been told that (mental) evaluation has been completed. I’m in the process of getting a trial date before the summer session.”

Meanwhile, during the first year of Pascoe’s term, a total of 32 murder cases were disposed either as a result of trial, a guilty plea or dismissal.

Court statistics of 2005 show that at the beginning of Pascoe’s administration, the solicitor inherited 53 murder cases in the three counties which make up the 1st Circuit.

“And I remember thinking, ’Is it too late for a recount?’” Pascoe quipped. “I knew we would have a lot of (cases involving) murders, but I had no idea it would be 53.”

Broken down, the figures show that Orangeburg County had 37 cases pending on Jan. 1, 2005; Dorchester County, 11; and Calhoun County had five.

But during the year, 10 cases were added to Orangeburg County; four to Dorchester County; while none were added in Calhoun County.

However, during that same span, 1st Circuit prosecutors disposed of 21 murder cases in Orangeburg County; nine in Dorchester County and two in Calhoun County.

The net bottom line is that the 1st Circuit now has 35 pending murder cases across the three counties.

Included among the 32 cases was a single dismissal in Dorchester County.

On May 14, 2003, a passerby spotted a vehicle parked at Paradise Pond, a popular local fishing spot in Harleyville. The body of 65-year-old Harold Jones was found floating nearby in the pond.

An autopsy revealed Jones had been beaten to death.

Along with three others, Raymond Hill was charged with murder in Jones’ death. After a lengthy incarceration, Hill’s case was dropped while those of the three others resulted in prison time.

“I’m just as proud of that one as a I am a conviction,” Pascoe said. “Here’s a man who sat in jail for about two years for a crime he didn’t commit, for a crime he wasn’t involved in.”

Pascoe said he set a goal for his office to move at least 15 murder cases in the first year.

“We came up with a list and prioritized the cases so we could start moving them,” he said.

That list was made up in chronological order, giving older cases priority, Pascoe said, which moved the eight-year-old case of Moses McBride to the top of the list.

However, Pascoe said his “hands were tied” when it came to McBride as a mental evaluation needed to be ordered, the results of which are still pending.

“It’s absurd that the families of the murder victims have had to wait this long,” Pascoe said.

Seventeen years old at the time his niece and nephew were murdered, McBride has been in jail since his arrest in 1998.

That case could come to trial this year, Pascoe said, if the mental evaluation shows McBride is competent to stand trial.

Of the 1st Circuit’s 32 adjudicated murder cases, 5th Circuit Solicitor Barney Giese said Pascoe is apparently “doing something right” to have that many serious cases moved in a single year.

“I think it speaks a lot for him, and it speaks a lot for his staff,” Giese said. “That’s just really good. That’s just super, not only in his first year but for any year.”

In other figures, Pascoe’s administration began with 135 jail cases of all types more than 90 days old.

By June 2005, that number had decreased to 66. It still remains in double digits, Pascoe said.

“My goal is to keep it under 100, circuit-wide,” he said.

A prosecutor has also been assigned to handle magistrate-level criminal domestic violence cases, which were formerly overseen by a state Attorney General’s office prosecutor.

“Thanks to Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, I have enough resources to go down there to prosecute CDV cases in Orangeburg and Dorchester Counties,” Pascoe said.

And Pascoe’s presence in drug cases is apparently being felt not only in the courtroom, but the streets as well.

A local bail bondsman said drug dealers are invoking Pascoe’s name when the quality of cocaine is questioned.

“What they’re saying is that ’It’ll lock you down like Pascoe,’” the bondsman said, wishing to remain anonymous.

Despite significant reductions made in the number of murder cases, the number of overall pending cases has risen in the past year by 389 cases.

At the end of 2004, there were 2,537 pending cases in the three counties as opposed to 2,926 at the end of 2005.

But that disparity may be explained, Pascoe said, by an increase in the number of warrants issued in the 1st Circuit.

In 2005, Orangeburg County issued 289 warrants over the previous year; Dorchester County, 221; while Calhoun County remained the same, according to the S.C. Court Administration.

In addition to the 510 warrant increase, second-offense criminal domestic violence, previously a magistrate’s court-level offense, is now prosecuted in General Sessions after a change in South Carolina law.

Prosecution strategies for this year include seeking a grant for an additional prosecutor to handle what Pascoe said will be a continually growing court docket.

“We’re going to take the same approach this year that we did last year,” Pascoe said. “Hopefully, we’ll never be in a position to where we have to move 32 murder cases in a year.”

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