Magistrates shall have exclusive jurisdiction of all criminal cases in which the punishment does not exceed a fine of one hundred dollars or imprisonment for thirty days, except cases in which an offense within the jurisdiction of a magistrate is included in the charge of an offense beyond his jurisdiction or when it is permissible to join a charge of an offense within his jurisdiction with one or more of which the magistrate has no jurisdiction. Magistrates shall have concurrent but not exclusive jurisdiction in the excepted cases. The provisions of this section shall not be construed so as to limit the jurisdiction of any magistrate whose jurisdiction has been extended beyond that stated above.
S.C. Code Ann. § 22-3-540
Exclusive and concurrent jurisdiction
Applied in 9 court decisions — leading case State v. Fennell (2000)
Most recently applied in Bayly v. State (April 2012)
1962 Code SECTION 43-68; 1952 Code SECTION 43-68; 1942 Code SECTION 3709; 1932 Code SECTION 3709; Civ
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: South Carolina Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain South Carolina statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.