Nearly 70% of the inmates serving life sentences under South Carolina’s two-strikes and three-strikes law are Black, ranging in age from 35 to 85 years old, according to S.C. Department of Corrections (SCDC) data.
The sentencing law, passed by the S.C. General Assembly in 1995, gives prosecutors the option to seek life sentences without parole for people convicted of two to three serious to most serious crimes in the Palmetto state.
Since the tough-on-crime sentencing law went into effect, , at least 368 people have been sent to the state’s prisons as of August 2026, according to prison system data. A Charleston City Paper analysis of the data shows that 69.8% of them are Black. Overall, people of African descent represent 58% of the state’s prison population, but a third of the state’s residents are Black.
North Charleston native Quintin Linen, who is Black, is the first person sentenced in Charleston County after he was convicted twice for armed robbery.
Three decades in prison
Linen, who will turn 61 on Nov. 28, has been in prison since Bill Clinton was president of the United States. He was convicted in 1997 on a second armed robbery charge. In total, both robberies involved less than $1,000.
So far, Linen is one of at least 56 people from Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties who are serving life sentences under the law.
Columbia criminal defense attorney Jack Swerling said he anticipates that the two-strike and three-strike laws will send increasing numbers of people to prison for life, raising the average age of the prison population along with the cost to care for them.
But it does not have to be that way said Allison Elder, executive director and co-founder of Time Served, a Greenville-based legal aid service. “It is optional for the state to serve a life notice,” Elder said. “They have the option to proceed as usual under the ordinary sentencing laws.”
Prosecutors around the state, Elder explained, have sometimes misinterpreted the law as being mandatory.
“The solicitor’s office might not have exercised thoughtful discretion” before a serving notice to seek a life sentence, which then binds the court to impose a life sentence, she said.
Swerling said he does expect changes in the two-strikes and three-strikes law to give more latitude to judges in sentencing. Lawmakers, he said, “don’t want to be the ones who are viewed as being soft on crime. They could lose an election.”
A S.C. Court Administration spokesperson said the agency could not comment on the high percentage of Black defendants who have received life sentences under the two strikes and three strikes law.
First in Charleston
Linen was 23 when he was first arrested on a charge of stealing $23 from a Majik Market Convenience Store in North Charleston on Oct. 15, 1987, while wielding a knife. He pleaded guilty on Jan. 28, 1988, and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. He served six years of that sentence.
In court filings after his conviction, Linen argued he had poor legal representation. He said he pleaded guilty because he was intimated by the court process. The late Charleston attorney Edward M. Brown was his attorney.
In a court document, Linen said: “Mr. Brown told me if I did not plead guilty, I would get the maximum sentence of 25 years. I felt intimated and like I did not have a choice. I did what Mr. Brown told me to do, not what I felt was right.”
Linen was charged with stealing $900 in October 1996 from the Budget Check Cashing on Rivers Avenue in North Charleston while holding a knife to a clerk’s throat. He was identified in a photo lineup. In April 1997, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
On the second charge, Linen sister’s, Sonya Linen of North Charleston, said he couldn’t have brandished a knife during that robbery because he was recovering from severe injuries received when he fell from a roof at The Citadel while working with a construction company.
“He had pins and rods in both of his arms, and he couldn’t care for himself,” she said. “So how could he hold a knife to the clerk’s throat?” she stressed.
Quintin Linen is housed in the Allendale Correctional Institution. He contacted Time Served months ago, but he was told he is not eligible for parole consideration, his sister said.
Linen has tried three times for post-conviction relief (PCR) from his 1988 and 1997 convictions. Each time, he was denied.
Taking a new look
Time Served does not represent Linen, but at the request of the City Paper, Elder reviewed some of his legal filings.
Elder said that in a memo, submitted by Linen’s former attorney, Tara Dawn Shurling of Columbia, she argued that Linen “never received his one bite at the apple to review his 1988 plea” that opened his path to a life sentence.
“He didn’t file his PCR timely, but he filed it when it mattered more, when he was served with his life notice in that second strike” for the armed robbery conviction in 1997, Elder said.
“But when he filed another PCR petition soon thereafter regarding the 1997 conviction itself, the procedures get somewhat intertwined. It sounds like he never got a full hearing regarding the ineffective assistance of his counsel in that 1988 case.”
Judges are not going to change a sentence unless there was an error made during the trial, Swerling said.
Orangeburg native Pete Shalamar Bryant is an example of how the court can correct an error in sentencing. Bryant was handed life in prison sentence without the possibility of parole after he pleaded guilty to two armed robberies. He was released from prison in May 2024 after First Circuit Solicitor David Pascoe determined the life sentence was overly harsh. Bryant had served 27 years in prison.
Debt to society
After a defendant like Linen is sentenced, the law allows SCDC to ask that an inmate “be made parole eligible once they have reached certain set ages and have spent a requisite number of years in prison,” Elder explained.
Inmates who have called Time Served seeking relief from life sentences haven’t met the age requirement, she said. “We aren’t aware of this provision being used, but it is something we can try as folks start to meet the requisite metrics,” she added
The average age of the state’s prison population is 42, an increase of just one year since the 2022 fiscal year. A SCDC spokesperson said, “As the prison population ages, we continue to adapt and to provide medical and mental health services for inmates as the needs arise.” The overall prison population hovers between 16,400 to 17,800 inmates. Most of them are older than 24 and younger than 55, according to a SCDC statement.
The S.C. Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services could determine whether a person is no longer a threat to society because of age and health. The law allows parole if an inmate has spent at least 30 years in prison and is at least 65 years old or has served at least 20 years and is at least 70 years old, Elder said.
In four years, Linen is expected to reach the age and length of sentence requirements to possibly be eligible for parole.
Charleston School of Law Professor Miller Shealy said: “Do these people need to stay in jail their entire life? A solid 20 years ought to be enough time for anybody, except for a capital offense like murder. I know people are mad at these people, they have committed heinous crimes, but realistically most violence predatory street crime is a young man’s game.”
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