Tiffany Carroll, left, with her lawyer, Rep. Travis Moore, R-Roebuck, appear virtually before the South Carolina Parole Board Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. (Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA – A Greenwood mother who has spent nearly five years in prison for killing her abuser was again denied parole, despite the repeated pleas of her family, law enforcement and two GOP legislators.
The South Carolina parole board’s 3-2 vote Wednesday was one vote shy of the 4-2 majority needed for Tiffany Janae Carroll to return to her five children. One board member was absent.
The vote came with little discussion, and the two who voted “no” provided no explanation.
The South Carolina Parole Board hears Tiffany Carroll’s application for parole in Columbia on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. (Jessica Holdman/SC Daily Gazette)
Carroll, 37, pleaded guilty but mentally ill to manslaughter in December 2019 for fatally stabbing her then-partner, 27-year-old William Jamal Johnson, about two years earlier.
Wednesday marked Carroll’s third parole attempt in as many years.
Beyond her family, those supporting her release included a former teacher, the police chief of the department that charged her, and the solicitor who prosecuted her case.
“Based on the high level of community support for Ms. Carroll, as well as the very unique circumstances that her case presents, the position of my office remains that Tiffany Carroll is an appropriate candidate for early release from her sentence,” Solicitor David Stumbo wrote in a two-page letter to the parole board dated July 5.
He noted that the circumstances were so unique, the judge in the case — now state Supreme Court Justice Letitia Verdin — made Carroll eligible for parole sooner than usually allowed.
Stumbo didn’t object then. And, for the second year in a row, he told the parole board in writing, “I strongly support her application for parole.”
Her supporters thought she had a good chance at release.
“The people of Greenwood want her back, and her children want her back,” Rep. John McCravy told the SC Daily Gazette before the vote.
The Greenwood Republican testified in Carroll’s favor Wednesday, as he did last year. Still, it was not enough.
After the hearing, McCravy called the denial a “miscarriage of justice in every sense of the word,” adding he’ll keep coming back as long as it takes.
“This was a woman who was repeatedly abused,” he told the Gazette. “And when she finally fought back, she’s continuing to be punished.”
Caroll attended virtually with her attorney, state Rep. Travis Moore, a Spartanburg County Republican.
The parole board asked her just one question: What was the most important thing she’s learned while in prison?
She responded that she’s studying organizational management in hopes of founding a nonprofit to help other victims of domestic abuse.
“I will spend the rest of my days trying to help other people in the situation that I was in,” she told the board.
She also said she accepts full responsibility for her actions. She acknowledged his family, saying she prays every day for their forgiveness and hopes someday they can have a relationship with her and Johnson’s son.
For the third time, no one attended to oppose her release.
What happened?
Carroll started dating Johnson, a childhood friend, in 2015. Within four months, she was pregnant.
Carroll later told a psychologist she had been warned he was violent but did not know the details until he started abusing her. Law enforcement officers responded to their home eight times between May 2016, a month before their son was born, and Johnson’s death.
In 2019, psychologist Dr. Lois Veronen, of Rock Hill, diagnosed Carroll with post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder linked to severe domestic violence at the hands of Johnson, The Post and Courier reported.
“The violent and degrading acts perpetrated by Jamal produced cognitive, affective and behavioral changes in Tiffany that have come to be known as the ‘Battered Woman Syndrome,’” which clouded her problem-solving ability that day, Veronen wrote in her report.
Accounts vary on exactly what happened that day in September 2017, after the couple started arguing.
What’s not disputed in the legal record is that Carroll at some point got a knife from the kitchen, cut him on the arm and ankle and stabbed him in the chest. After realizing what she’d done, she tried to save his life, applying pressure to his wounds. He died at the local hospital.
Asked at her first parole hearing why she did it, Carroll said she was trying to leave “when he leaped out at me and hit me again.” What happens next, she told the board, she still didn’t remember, The Post and Courier reported.
A manslaughter conviction usually requires someone to serve at least a third of their sentence before coming up for parole. But at sentencing, then-Circuit Court Judge Verdin permitted Carroll to be eligible after serving 25% of her 15-year sentence.
Three rejections, two split votes
At Carroll’s first hearing in 2022, the board had a letter from Greenwood Police Chief TJ Chaudoin objecting to her parole. He told multiple TV news stations that it’s common practice for the department to oppose parole requests when a person first becomes eligible.
The denial was unanimous at that first parole hearing.
But, as on Wednesday, the vote last September, following public pleas that included a news conference McCravy helped arrange in Greenwood, was 3-2.
Among the reasons board member Frank Wideman, a former Greenwood County sheriff, cited in saying “no” last year was the police chief’s letter a year earlier.
Yet, Chaudoin no longer objected. He later said he simply didn’t know about the second hearing in time to send a new letter switching his position.
He made sure to send one this year.
“Mrs. Carroll’s situation is a prime example of a person who deserves another chance,” Chaudin wrote in a letter to the board.
Her life in prison and plans after release
According to her inmate report, Carroll has had no discipline issues while in prison. She’s earned work credits as a custodian, in the laundry and in landscaping. And she’s signed up for classes through Claflin University.
In previous hearings, she told the parole board she had gone through an anger management program, received counseling, participated in a group called Overcoming Shame and took parenting classes.
Had she been released, Carroll could have gone to live with her uncle’s family and had two job offers – one from L&W Catering in Greenwood and a second personally extended by McCravy, who is an attorney.
McCravy has also offered to give her a vehicle to get to and from work.
Carroll’s five children, ranging in age from 5 to 17, are spread among multiple family members, including Carroll’s sister, grandmother and a father in Columbia.
“This whole family has been through it,” said Mary Ann Wingard, Carroll’s second grade teacher who has been an avid supporter since her arrest. “I don’t know that her children will ever get over this.”
“She’s such a good mother,” Wingard added. “Our state is wasting it’s money having her in prison.”
McCravy has said he plans to sponsor legislation to update a 28-year-old state law on “battered spouse syndrome.” Existing law allows testimony about abuse at trial.
But a state that historically ranks among the worst in the nation for women killed by men, McCravy says state law should allow the diagnoses as a more direct defense to a crime.
In 2023, 51 South Carolinians were killed by their partner, 70% of those were women killed by men and just 16% of those couples were married. Additionally, more than 28,000 victims reported being assaulted by a partner, according to the latest crime data from the State Law Enforcement Division.
McCravy also plans to reintroduce legislation tweaking language about when an inmate is eligible for pardons. The state board interprets state law to allow pardon consideration only before someone is first eligible for parole — which would’ve been before September 2022.
McCravy prefiled legislation last November for the 2024 session that would specify pardons can be sought “at any time” evidence shows extraordinary circumstances.
But that bill received no attention. No other legislator even signed on as a co-sponsor.
SC Daily Gazette Editor Seanna Adcox contributed to this report.
Letter in support of parole 2024 – Tiffany Jenae Carroll (SCDC 00382007)