S.C. attorney general faces public records lawsuit

COLUMBIA — A freelance journalist from Newberry has sued South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, saying he has intentionally withheld public records she requested in the fight over entertainer James Brown’s estate.

Sue Summer’s lawyers sued Wilson last month, saying he is violating South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act by not releasing the diary of the woman who said she was Brown’s wife when he died in 2006, and the contract between Wilson’s office and a private law firm handling a lawsuit over a settlement a former attorney general brokered over the soul singer’s estate.

Brown’s death set off a fight over his will that has lingered for more than six years. The settlement arranged by former Attorney General Henry McMaster remains in limbo after two trustees who were overseeing the estate before a judge removed them sued. The case remains before the South Carolina Supreme Court.

Summer began investigating the struggle over Brown’s estate in 2011. She clashed with Wilson’s office in the fall after a lawyer hired by the attorney general issued a subpoena against her, asking her to turn over her notes, emails, audio recordings and any other information relating to more than a dozen people involved in Brown’s will.

Summer vowed to fight the order, which was dropped after several stories were written about the request.

Summer’s lawsuit includes three letters she wrote in January, March and June of 2011 requesting the records involved with McMaster’s decision to set up the I Feel Good Trust, named after one of Brown’s biggest hits.

The trust’s goal is to pay for scholarships for children who live around Brown’s home, just over the Savannah River in Aiken County.

“After all, there are perhaps thousands of young people for whom the James Brown ‘I Feel Good’ Trust might open educational opportunities — and that alone makes these questions of great public importance,” Summer wrote in a June letter requesting some of the documents.

Wilson’s office said regular public record laws don’t apply in this case because the state is being sued.

“Everything that they have asked for, either we do not have it, or it does not exist, or we have already turned it over if we do possess it, or it is the subject of a court order, which we are not allowed to turn over,” Wilson said.

Wilson said he has been a strong advocate for releasing as much information to the public as possible.

Summer said she is requesting the diary of Tomi Rae Hynie, who claimed to Brown’s wife when the singer died, because she said sources have told her Hynie wrote in it that she isn’t sure the couple was legally married.

The former backup singer for Brown fought with the estate for years after the singer’s lawyers said their marriage was annulled because she was still married to another man when she and Brown exchanged vows.

The settlement approved after the trustees were booted included an agreement that Brown’s and Hynie’s marriage was legitimate.