Supreme Court upholds seizure, destruction of gambling machines

Dan Lewerenz

Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2000 | 9:36 a.m.

COLUMBIA, S.C. - The South Carolina Supreme Court has upheld two state magistrates' rulings allowing the seizure and destruction of 215 illegal video gambling machines from two Greenville warehouses.

In November 1997, a confidential informant told the State Law Enforcement Division that Collins Entertainment was storing illegal video gambling machines at the Brandon Mills and Rutherford Road warehouses.

Undercover agents saw the machines at both locations and obtained search warrants from a magistrate. SLED officers seized 192 machines during two raids in December 1997, then received a second search warrant from another magistrate in January 1998 and seized 23 machines.

Both magistrates said the machines were illegal and ordered that they be destroyed.

Collins Entertainment said it planned to send the machines to Georgia and they were therefore, were protected under the federal Gambling Devices Transportation Act, which would supersede state law.

The Supreme Court said Monday that the federal law did not preempt state law.

"On the contrary, the language of the federal statute makes it clear that it is designed to act in concert with state laws prohibiting gambling," the court ruled, saying a primary purpose of the federal law is to help states enforce their anti-gambling laws.

Assistant prosecutor Mindy Hervey said Monday authorities waited to destroy the machines until the courts had ruled. She said authorities would keep the machines until it was clear whether Collins Entertainment would appeal through the federal court system.

Calls to Collins Entertainment's headquarters and legal department Monday were not returned.

The company's attorneys also argued that the machines were not illegal because they were not operational. Simply changing a computer chip can convert a video gambling machine into a video game, they said, so the actual machines should not be destroyed.

The justices rejected that argument, saying the Legislature chose to leave the law intact when it was updated in 1997. "The plain language of the statute makes clear the Legislature's intent to outlaw mere possession of such machines," the court said.

Then-prosecutor Joseph Watson had told Collins' company that it was legal to possess the machines as long as they weren't operational, but the court said the advice did not make it legal to possess the machines.

Collins Entertainment also argued that the search warrant was insufficient; that SLED's agents illegally conducted the second search; that seizing and destroying the machines violated Fourth Amendment protection against unlawful search and seizure; that destroying the machines without a hearing violated the company's right to due process; that magistrates' orders are invalid; and that the state violated the company's equal protection rights by engaging in selective prosecution.

The court rejected all those arguments