Michael Pearson Lawsuit: Wrongful Conviction and Immunity Fight

Michael Pearson’s lawsuit, filed January 30, 2026, in Clarendon County Court of Common Pleas, targets South Carolina prosecutors, sheriff’s investigators, and the state Attorney General’s Office over the more than fifteen years he spent in prison for a 2010 armed robbery he did not commit. The twenty-four-page complaint brings seventeen claims against nine defendants and seeks actual damages, punitive damages, court costs, and attorneys’ fees, with a jury trial demanded.¹ A federal court is now weighing whether prosecutorial immunity will knock out part of the case before discovery begins.²

Pearson is represented by civil attorney Josh Kendrick of Kendrick and Leonard, P.C., based in Greenville and Columbia.¹

Who Pearson Is Suing

The complaint names four individual defendants and five government entities.

The individuals are Third Circuit Solicitor Ernest “Chip” Finney III; solicitor’s investigator Mark Creech; Clarendon County Sheriff’s Office Captain Kenneth Clark; and retired sheriff’s investigator Thomas “Lin” Ham. The government entities are Clarendon County, the Third Circuit Solicitor’s Office, the Clarendon County Sheriff’s Office, the City of Sumter, and the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office.¹

Marie Hodge, the Sumter Police fingerprint examiner whose identification anchored the original case, died in 2021 and is not a named defendant.¹

What the Lawsuit Alleges

The core theory is that Pearson’s 2010 arrest lacked probable cause and that officials continued the prosecution, and then resisted his release, despite mounting evidence of innocence. The complaint asserts Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment violations under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, along with common-law claims of malicious prosecution and false imprisonment.³

The specific allegations fall into five buckets.

On the forensic evidence, the lawsuit alleges that Hodge’s fingerprint match was tainted by confirmation bias because she compared the latent print to Pearson’s only after investigators supplied his name, rather than performing a blind analysis.¹

On disclosure, the complaint accuses prosecutors of withholding exculpatory evidence that could have exonerated Pearson earlier.³

On post-conviction delay, the lawsuit alleges that after co-defendant Victor Weldon’s January 2023 confession, corroborated by statements from Leonard Deshun Smith, prosecutors and the Attorney General’s Office failed to move for Pearson’s release for more than two years.¹

On alleged coercion, the suit claims that in June 2025 Finney refused to cooperate with Pearson’s release unless Pearson agreed to waive all future civil claims and to never return to Clarendon County, and that Finney then cancelled a July 2025 hearing that could have freed Pearson sooner.³

On the Attorney General’s role, the complaint alleges that the office actively opposed Pearson’s release and fought his appeals on procedural grounds rather than engaging with the innocence claim on the merits.¹

Finney has denied delaying or conditioning Pearson’s release, saying his office followed the facts.⁴ Both Finney and the Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on the pending litigation.³

How the Underlying Conviction Fell Apart

Pearson was convicted in May 2012 of first-degree burglary, armed robbery, grand larceny, kidnapping, and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. He received a sixty-year sentence. The case rested on a right thumbprint that Hodge identified on the outside of the victim’s stolen El Camino, a vehicle on property where Pearson had previously done landscaping work. DNA recovered from duct tape used to restrain the victim matched not Pearson but co-defendant Weldon.⁴

In January 2023, Weldon admitted his own role, identified his actual accomplices, and said Pearson was not involved and that he had not known Pearson before their shared incarceration. Weldon pleaded guilty in June 2023 and received an eighteen-year sentence, a forty-two-year reduction.⁵ Smith, questioned early in the original investigation, confessed in 2015 and again in a March 2025 polygraph interview, naming Weldon, Kevin Mellette, a man known as “Peanut,” and later James Leonard Clark Jr. as his co-conspirators. None of the accounts placed Pearson at the scene.⁶ Investigators also corroborated an alibi using evidence that had been available since 2010.²

On August 28, 2025, Judge Robert Hood vacated the convictions and granted a new trial after Finney conceded that credible evidence established a reasonable probability of innocence. Pearson was released on a $50,000 personal recognizance bond. Prosecutors dismissed all charges on September 8, 2025.⁷⁸

The Prosecutorial Immunity Fight

The pivotal legal question in the case is whether the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office can be sued at all. In federal court, the office has moved to dismiss the claims against it on prosecutorial immunity grounds. It argues that prosecutors cannot be held civilly liable for positions taken while defending criminal convictions in post-conviction proceedings, that the office had no role in Pearson’s original arrest or imprisonment, and that it owed no independent legal duty to act on innocence evidence in the way the lawsuit describes.²

Pearson’s attorneys responded in early June 2026 that the immunity defense does not apply because the office was not merely advocating in court but conducting its own investigation into the innocence claims. Their argument: “investigation is not advocacy.” Once prosecutors took on that investigative work, the response contends, they assumed a duty to act on what they found. The filing cites Rule 3.8 of the South Carolina Rules of Professional Conduct, which requires prosecutors to make reasonable efforts to remedy a conviction when they become aware of clear and convincing evidence of innocence.²

The distinction is decisive. Absolute prosecutorial immunity has long shielded prosecutors from civil suits for actions taken in their advocacy role, including initiating prosecutions and presenting evidence in court. Courts have applied only the weaker shield of qualified immunity when prosecutors act in investigative or administrative roles closer to those of a detective.⁹ How the federal court classifies the Attorney General’s post-conviction conduct will likely determine whether the case against that office survives.

Where the Case Stands

As of June 2026, the federal court has not ruled on the Attorney General’s motion to dismiss. If the motion is denied, the case moves into discovery, which could open internal prosecutorial communications and investigative records to review. If granted, the Attorney General’s Office would be removed from the litigation before that stage. The state-court claims against the remaining defendants, including Finney and the law enforcement officials, remain pending.²³

1
QC News. Wrongfully Convicted Man Suing Prosecutor, SC Attorney General’s Office
2
FITSNews. Michael Pearson Lawsuit Tests Prosecutorial Immunity Limits
3
WIS-TV. Wrongfully Convicted Man Sues Clarendon County Prosecutors After 15 Years in Prison
4
FITSNews. Prosecutor Under Fire: New Filings in Michael Pearson Case
5
North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence. Michael Pearson
6
FITSNews. Pearson Second Amended PCR Petition
7
WIS-TV. Hearing Scheduled for Man Who Maintains Innocence in Clarendon County Assault and Robbery
8
Manning Live. Lawsuit Claims Systemic Failures Led to Pearson’s Wrongful Conviction
9
South Carolina Judicial Department. Williams v. Condon, Appeal No. 3392