‘I promise you, you will be sick and tired of my face and my voice until this gets fixed,’ Steve Federico said in the hearing, ‘I will fight until my last breath for my daughter.’
In a House Judiciary hearing, Steve Federico, the North Carolina father of a 22-year-old woman who was allegedly murdered in May while visiting friends in South Carolina, condemned the policies and lawmakers he claims allowed his daughter’s alleged killer to roam free. The alleged killer, Alexander Dickey, had 39 prior arrests, 25 of those for felony charges, Federico said.
Between 2013 and 2024, court records list multiple charges against Dickey as “nolle prosequi” in South Carolina’s 11th Judicial Circuit, indicating that the solicitor declined to prosecute those charges. Five of those instances occurred since South Carolina’s 11th Judicial Circuit Solicitor, Republican Rick Hubbard, took office in 2017. (Hubbard succeeded former Solicitor Donnie Myers, who served in the role for four decades.) These instances included two charges for weapons violations, along with charges for criminal conspiracy, a traffic violation, and receiving stolen goods valued at $10,000 or more, according to court documents.
Several of the charges appear to have been dropped as part of plea deals in return for guilty pleas to other offenses. Hubbard did not respond to a Federalist request for comment as to why his office agreed to adjust the charges.
According to local outlet Wis10, “Dickey was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree burglary, a sentence that carries a minimum prison sentence of 15 years” in August 2014. In October of that year, he “was served warrants for a third first-degree burglary charge.”
“A month later, Dickey pleaded guilty to second-degree non-violent burglary instead of first-degree burglary” and “was sentenced to 10 years suspended during probation.” In March of 2015, Dickey returned to court for the other two charges, one of which court records show was dropped. “For the other charge, Dickey pleaded guilty to a first offense of third-degree burglary, even though he’d pleaded guilty to burglary just months before,” according to the outlet.
In 2023, Dickey pled guilty to another burglary. Although he was “originally facing a charge of violent second-degree burglary,” he instead “pleaded guilty to a first offense, third-degree burglary for a second time.”