SC attorney general taking Colleton wiretapping case after state grand jury asked to probe

WALTERBORO — The S.C. Attorney General’s Office will take the lead on prosecuting former Colleton County technology director Jeffrey Colton Hill after local prosecutors asked to have the state grand jury investigate his conduct.

In a Dec. 4 letter, Attorney General Alan Wilson told 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone that he was taking jurisdiction of the case, which has so far resulted in a wiretapping charge against Hill.

But Wilson spokesman Robert Kittle would not say if the state grand jury — a secretive panel with sweeping powers to investigate crimes like public corruption — would take up the matter.

Solicitor Duffie Stone had told Wilson he thought the investigation into Hill’s conduct would benefit from broader investigative powers, according to a Nov. 28 letter. Unlike a county grand jury, Stone wrote, the state grand jury can subpoena records. And unlike law enforcement officers, it can compel witnesses to testify.

Hill was charged in November with one count of wiretapping. In an affidavit, an agent from SLED alleged that Hill used his role in the county’s IT department to snoop on a private phone call in July.

Colleton County fired Hill on Nov. 22, the morning he was released on bail.

If the state grand jury does investigate, its involvement would mark a potential escalation in the case against Hill.

Jeffrey Hill, as seen on Colleton County’s website, served as a the county’s technology director. Provided

But the request itself signals that investigators are burrowing deeper into his alleged conduct at a moment when his mother, Colleton County’s embattled Clerk of Court Rebecca Hill, is facing scrutiny of her own.

Rebecca Hill is at the center of an ongoing SLED investigation into potential jury tampering during the double-murder trial of the notorious ex-attorney Alex Murdaugh, who was convicted in March of killing his wife and son in June 2021 at the family’s hunting estate. Murdaugh’s attorneys have claimed that the clerk sought to make jurors distrustful of their client, an assertion she has flatly denied. State prosecutors have dismissed the claims as a conspiracy theory.

Whether the alleged wiretapping has anything to do with the heightened scrutiny of Rebecca Hill is so far unclear, though a person familiar with the case said agents seized her cellphone the day her son was arrested.

In an interview, Stone stressed that prosecutors had not determined if Jeffrey Hill’s case was connected to anyone else’s. But Stone said using the state grand jury’s broader powers could help investigators determine if there is a link.