SUMMARY: The Mobile County Sheriff’s Office will now charge Mystic societies for security during parades outside city limits, requiring groups like the Order of the Rolling River to pay $3,600 for deputies. Eric Wheat expressed concerns about the financial impact on smaller organizations, noting that this new expense could consume a third of their budget. Deputies will cost $45 per hour for a minimum of four hours. Despite the changes, the Order plans to proceed with their parade on Saturday at 2 p.m. after 25 years of prior assistance. The Sheriff’s Office cited budget cuts as the reason for the decision.

The Mobile County Sheriff’s Office will no longer send deputies to patrol parade routes outside of the city’s jurisdiction.

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Alabama House passes bill expanding death penalty to child sexual assault

by Anna Barrett, Alabama Reflector
February 11, 2025

The Alabama House of Representatives Tuesday passed a bill expanding offenses punishable by the death penalty to sexual assault of minors. 

HB 49, sponsored by Rep. Matt Simpson, R-Daphne, passed the House on an 86-5 vote, with nine abstentions. The legislation would allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty for  those convicted of rape and sodomy in the first degree when the victim is younger than 12 years old. 

Simpson said in a committee hearing last week that the bill is intended to challenge existing U.S. Supreme Court precedent limiting capital punishment to crimes in which a person was killed. 

The original version of the bill extended it to when the victim is younger than six years old, but the House Judiciary Committee proposed the substitution on Feb. 5.

Rep. Thomas Jackson, D-Thomasville, claimed that Alabama cannot be a pro-life state with legislation like this. 

“Aren’t we a pro-life state?” Jackson asked. “You can’t be pro-life and killing people.”

Simpson said he believed making the crime subject to the death penalty would act as a deterrent. 

“I believe you have a right to life, but your actions can cause you to lose that right,” he said. 

Under existing law, rape and sodomy in the first degree are both Class A felonies with punishment up to life in prison without the possibility of parole. 

Rep. Kenyatté Hassell, D-Montgomery, disagreed and pointed to the cases in which the crime is committed under the influence of drugs or a mental illness, and that the death penalty is extreme. Simpson said the legislation is modeled after that of capital murder, where not every crime is punished by the death penalty. 

“Don’t get me wrong, I have three daughters. If this were to happen to my daughters I would be very upset,” Hassell said. “But I think it’s extreme … We didn’t even talk about castration. We immediately went to the death penalty on this.”

Rep. Phillip Ensler, D-Montgomery, cited the United States Supreme Court ruling on Kennedy v. Louisiana, where the court ruled  “unusual” punishments, like the death penalty could not be enforced if nobody died. 

“Chances are, the State of Alabama will get sued for passing a bill that’s unconstitutional, we’ll spend tons of taxpayer dollars defending it in court,” Ensler said. 

Simpson said that since Florida and Tennessee have passed similar bills, like Simpson’s both aimed at challenging that precedent.  

“It just seems fiscally irresponsible to pass something that we’re going to ask taxpayers to defend when, yet again, people are having a hard time paying for eggs, paying gas, paying for milk,” Ensler said.

Rep. Neil Rafferty, D-Birmingham, said he would vote against the bill simply for his moral alignment that the death penalty is wrong. Rep. Patrick Sellers, D-Pleasant Grove, said he felt tension from a parent’s perspective on the bill. He voted yes on the bill. 

“While there are those that argue against the death penalty and argue against life without parole, until you stand in the place of a father, or a mother, and your child has been violated and you can’t do anything … I think that will say a lot,” he said. 

The bill moves to the Alabama Senate.

Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com.

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South Carolina congresswoman accuses 4 men, including ex-fiancé, of being sexual ‘predators’

by Shaun Chornobroff, Alabama Reflector
February 11, 2025

This story originally appeared on South Carolina Daily Gazette.

U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-South Carolina, accused four men, including her ex-fiancé, of “some of the most heinous crimes against women imaginable” during a nearly hour-long prepared speech Monday night on the House floor.

The 1st District congresswoman said she discovered thousands of photos taken with hidden cameras as well as recordings the “predators” made of themselves sexual assaulting women over years. She was among the victims. Some were underage girls, she said.

“None of you will get away with it,” said Mace, who has represented the Lowcountry since 2020. “None of you will because tonight is about justice for all of the women that you all raped, that you all filmed, that you all photographed, that you all abused for years.”

Headshots of the four men, along with where they live, were on a poster that read “PREDATORS. STAY AWAY FROM.”

All four men strongly denied the allegations to The Post and Courier after the speech.

“I categorically deny these allegations. I take this matter seriously and will cooperate fully with any necessary legal processes to clear my name,” her ex-fiancé, Patrick Bryant of Charleston County, told the newspaper.

The two broke up in late 2023, which would be after Mace said she found the evidence.

The State Law Enforcement Division confirmed after her speech that Bryant is being investigated for assault, harassment and voyeurism.

The investigation started Dec. 14, 2023, after SLED was contacted by U.S. Capitol Police. Multiple interviews and search warrants have happened since. A “well-documented case file” will eventually be available. But the “complex” case is ongoing and involves multiple lawyers, SLED said in a statement.

Once the investigation is complete, the file will be sent to a prosecutor for review, it concluded.

The statement did not name any of the other three men Mace called out in her speech.

One reached by the Gazette said he will “fight this in a court of law.”

“I unequivocally deny all the allegations made against me which are baseless, repugnant and defamatory,” Eric Bowman, former owner of the Charleston Battery soccer team, responded in a text.

‘This monster stole my body’

Mace’s speech started with a declaration that she was going “scorched earth.”

Mace, 47, said she first discovered the crimes after confronting Bryant, a computer software entrepreneur, about a text she received. He initially put his phone in a safe but later gave her the combination.

She looked through his phone and saw a woman unconscious being sexually assaulted. She also found photos of a teenager undressed “in the kind of underwear a child would wear,” she said.

Mace then said she saw another video of a slender woman with long brown hair. The woman was unaware she was being filmed, Mace said.

She turned up the volume and heard her own voice. The congresswoman zoomed in on the video. There was no denying it was her.

“My entire body was paralyzed, and I couldn’t move,” an emotional Mace said. “Were my feet on the floor? Was I breathing? I had no idea. I could feel pain shooting out of my heart, out of my chest.”

“This monster stole my body. It felt like I had been raped,” she said.

It happened in 2022, she said, while she and Bryant were at a function at an Isle of Palms property owned by him and another man she called out as part of the group of predators. She had two vodka sodas and blacked out, something she said had never happened before.

“My memories of that night are like flashes in and out of dark, flashes in and out of the night,” she said. “I was raped that night.”

Mace, who announced her engagement to Bryant in May 2022, said she could not be sure if it was Bryant who did it.

On one camera alone, she said, she found 10,633 videos, plus numerous photos of adult women and about a dozen photos of underage girls.

“I found file after file,” she said, adding that it seemed most were unaware of what was happening.

The night before she left Bryant in November 2023, Mace said she was physically assaulted by him. She added she still has a mark to this day from it.

“Rather than see this mark as a scar, I see this mark of a free woman, free from a monster,” Mace said.

Mace mentioned her Christian faith throughout her speech. She also mentioned how the daughter of Ethel Lance, a 70-year-old victim of the 2015 Mother Emmanuel shooting, forgave the killer.

“I don’t want to forgive. I don’t want to, but I know that as a woman of faith, I have to,” Mace said.

Throughout her speech, the phone number of a hotline for victims was displayed on a poster beside her. Mace encouraged any victims of the men to call (843) 212-7048.

Attorney general accusations

Mace also accused Attorney General Alan Wilson, an expected foe in the 2026 governor’s race, of not addressing the crimes against her and other women — allegations his office called “categorically false.”

During her speech, Mace stood next to a poster of Wilson that read “Do-Nothing Attorney General,” a moniker she has routinely used to describe him.

Mace said she turned evidence of her findings over to the attorney general, who failed to take any action with it and at one point refused further evidence.

But Wilson said neither he nor anyone in his office had any knowledge of the accusations until her speech. His office has not received any reports or requests for assistance from any law enforcement agency or prosecutor’s office, his office said in a statement released shortly after the speech.

Beyond that, it is not the attorney general’s job to start a police investigation, the statement noted.

“Ms. Mace either does not understand or is purposefully mischaracterizing the role of the attorney general” as the state’s chief prosecutor, it said.

As for her claim that Wilson refused to receive evidence, his office said, “the attorney general would always direct any citizen to provide evidence of a crime to the appropriate law enforcement agency, which would be responsible for the investigation.”

The lengthy statement also pointed out that Wilson and Mace have been at multiple events together over the past six months and that Mace has Wilson’s personal cellphone number.

“Not once has she approached or reached out to him regarding any of her concerns,” it read.

Mace has made stops around the state in recent weeks as she contemplates a gubernatorial bid. Gov. Henry McMaster is ineligible to run again, creating wide-open field.

So far, only former reality TV star and state Treasurer Thomas Ravenel has announced a run for governor, which he did on X last week.

But Mace, Wilson and Lt. Gov. Pam Evette are the three most expected to run. Mace has been highly critical of both Wilson and Evette on social media.

Transgender controversies

Mace has also been making headlines for recent comments about transgender people.

In November, she led the charge to ban transgender women from using women’s restrooms in the U.S. Capitol and House office buildings.

Her resolution followed Delaware electing Rep. Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender member of Congress. House Speaker Mike Johnson then issued a rule that “all single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings — such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms — are reserved for individuals of that biological sex.”

Mace then introduced legislation to expand the rule to all federal buildings, as well as a separate bill applying the rule to restrooms nationwide. It threatens to prohibit federal aid to any company or government not complying. No action has been taken on either of those bills yet.

Last Thursday, Mace was criticized as using offensive language toward trans people during a House Oversight Committee hearing on spending by the United States Agency for International Development, known as USAID, which the Trump administration has halted.

Mace accused USAID of “funding some of the dumbest, I mean stupidest, just dumbest initiatives imaginable, all supported by the left,” citing a list of diversity and transgender advocacy initiatives funded around the world.

“Our foreign assistance system is badly broken, and this ends now,” she said in a video of her questioning she proudly included in her weekly newsletter.

When a Democrat on the committee told Mace she was using a slur to the LGBTQ community, she interrupted him and repeated the term multiple times, saying, “I really don’t care. You want penises in women’s bathrooms, and I’m not going to have it.”

The day before, she received a personal shoutout from President Donald Trump when he signed an executive order prohibiting transgender athletes from competing in female sports.

During her speech Monday on the House floor, Mace touted multiple bills she introduced to protect women.

They include legislation titled the Prison Rape Prevention Act, which requires prisoners to be housed and transported based on their biological sex. She said she introduced the bill “so a woman can’t be raped by a man who thinks he’s a woman.”

And she doubled down on her critics.

“I’ll take all of the arrows and all of the attacks, if it means I’m taking these attacks for each and every one of you,” Mace said. “I’m doing this today because we can’t delay justice. Justice victims like myself need to move forward.”

Mace cannot be sued for her accusations. The Speech or Debate Clause protects members of Congress from lawsuits for what is said on the floor.

SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com.

Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com.

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