CRIMINAL USED AS TOOL IN ATTORNEY GENERAL RACE

A career criminal gunned down by Charleston police more than five years ago
has become a focal point in the race for attorney general. The violent life
of "Rusty" Corvette is now front-and-center in Democrat Steve Benjamin's
campaign against Republican Henry McMaster. Corvette died in a hail of
police bullets in 1997 after a 20-year life of crime, not far from the
Byrnes Down neighborhood in West Ashley where he grew up. But it was his
involvement in the slaying of a Greenville law enforcement officer that
Benjamin is using - making it the second time in 12 years that Democrats
have tried to taint McMaster as being soft on a criminal. The story begins
in the early 1980s when Wilbur Rutledge Corvette Jr. agreed to testify
about a cocaine ring in exchange for a lenient sentence.

He was originally wanted for a string of burglaries, but federal
authorities became interested in another matter when he told them about a
well-known Columbia car dealer who also was running a drug operation. The
dealer, Newby Love, was already under investigation, so federal agents cut
a deal with Corvette in exchange for his testimony in what became known as
"Operation Jackpot." Corvette was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison
but served only two. In 1984, McMaster, then U.S. Attorney for South
Carolina, signed a letter on Corvette's behalf to the U.S. Parole
Commission where he praised Corvette as "an instrumental witness" in the
case, and asked that to be considered in determining the time of his release.

At the time, Corvette was seeking early parole. "It's a pretty standard
part of a_ plea agreement to tell authorities how much (a witness) helps or
doesn't help, and he was quite helpful," McMaster said Tuesday. The parole
board denied Corvette's request, but he later was released by a federal
judge, McMaster and other sources indicated. A few months after Corvette's
release, he was indicted for the murder of state constable Valdon O. Keith.
Keith was riding with a Greenville County sheriff's deputy and was shot and
killed while they chased Corvette and Samuel Leroy Wodke, who had just
robbed an Upstate convenience store. After his arrest, Corvette told police
Wodke was the killer.

Prosecutors believed him, and in exchange for his testimony, dropped the
murder charge and allowed Corvette to plead guilty to armed robbery.

He was sentenced to 21 years and served 11. Corvette's involvement in the
Keith murder is now part of the political fight as his son and daughter,
Scott and Judy Keith, are featured prominently in a TV ad for Benjamin in
which they contend McMaster's intervention played a part in the death of
their father. "We don't need Henry McMaster if he's going to put someone
like that back on the streets," Judy Keith says in the 30-second
commercial. Benjamin said the ad is designed to point out a flaw in
McMaster as he campaigns to be the state's top prosecutor, specifically
that he wrongfully stuck his neck out by writing a favorable letter for a
hardened criminal. "This guy was a bad guy," Benjamin said Tuesday.

Benjamin said that although Corvette didn't shoot Keith, he is guilty by
association. "The hand of one is the hand of all," he said. McMaster said
Tuesday the ad is misleading because it fails to mention that a federal
judge shortened Corvette's sentence. "The ad saying I arranged for his
early release is 100 percent false," said McMaster, who is running a
counter ad. Benjamin said the ad is truthful because any favorable word
from a U.S. attorney about a felon is far-reaching in determining his state
of release.

This is the second time Democrats have used Corvette as a political tool
against McMaster. The first was in 1990 when McMaster was challenging
Democrat Nick Theodore in the race for lieutenant governor.

At the time, Theodore said McMaster engineered Corvette's release.
Corvette, who was in jail in 1990, denied Theodore's version. "I worked a
deal, but it wasn't with Henry McMaster," he said, contending he got his
own sentence reduced.