Bryan Getchius had nothing to hide when he was pulled over by Greenwood County Sheriff’s deputies nearly two years ago.
In fact, he told the deputies he’d been clean from heroin for more than a year and was headed from his mother’s house in Greenwood to Florida where he lived and worked, helping others in recovery.
Getchius didn’t mind if police searched his car.
“I’m doing all the right things in my life. I said, ‘go ahead’".
Bryan's story
Bodycam video shows one of the deputies, Wesley McClinton, quickly confiscating a blue bottle of pills. Getchius tells him it’s prescription medicine.
McClinton and other deputies then look up the pills’ markings on their phones and find; the pills are what Getchius says they are.
Still, they’re suspicious.
“Most pills don’t look like that,” Deputy McClinton tells Getchius.
“So, we’re going to test them because they look very worn and honestly not real.”
The deputies conduct several field drug tests on the pills, some, multiple times. They tell Getchius the pills tested positive for fentanyl and take him into custody.
“Sir, I’ve never been to jail,” pleads Getchius on the video. “Please don’t arrest me.”
Getchius knew he was innocent.
“I looked him in the eyes as they put me in the police car, and I said, ‘you know this isn’t right.’ I said, ‘you know that’s not drugs.’”
Backlogged labs and presumptive tests
But it would take the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division more than a year to find that the pills were in fact prescription medicine for irritable bowel syndrome.
By then, Getchius had already lost his job, endured 15 days in jail without his medication, spent 7 months under house arrest, and could not attend recovery meetings.
In March, the 42-year-old filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Greenwood County Sheriff’s Office, Sheriff Dennis Kelly and three deputies.
Both the sheriff and Deputy McClinton declined to comment. Attempts to reach the other two deputies, David Keener and James Freemen, have been unsuccessful.
The lawsuit cites a backlog of 18,000 cases at our state’s lab. South Carolina Public Radio reached out to SLED to confirm those numbers but has yet to hear back.
As for those field drug tests deputies used, they’ve been widely criticized for producing false positives.
A 2024 study by the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania finds roughly 30,000 people may be wrongly arrested every year because of those tests.
“This is not a problem that’s unique to this region,” says Tom Van Koughnett. “It’s across the country.”
Van Koughnett is the director of the new Tri-County Biological Science Center in North Charleston. He’s set up labs in Michigan and Florida.
A new, regional forensics lab
Van Koughnett says state labs across the nation are experiencing severe backlogs in forensic testing, with turnaround times taking months, even years.
He says the new center in the Lowcountry will accelerate testing as the first regional facility in the state, serving Charleston, Berkeley, and Dorchester Counties.
Van Koughnett’s partner in crime, so to speak, is former long-time Charleston County coroner Rae Wooten. She’s worked some of the area’s most high-profile cases, including the Sofa Super Store fire in 2007 and the Mother Emanuel Church massacre in 2015.
“It’s got to be right, and it needs to be quick,” says Wooten of forensic testing.
She knows what it’s like to wait for test results from the state’s busy and backlogged lab.
“I actually got to the point where I would have to pay for DNA testing at other labs,” says Wooten.
Wooten says she and other local leaders wanted to build a county lab nearly 20 years ago. But then, there wasn’t funding.
Now she walks the halls of the new facility with Van Koughnett who gives a tour. And security is tight.
The 21-thousand square foot facility is a maze of hallways and labs with equipment still being unpacked. A slight hum can be heard throughout the building which Van Koughnett says is ventilation to protect lab analysts.
“We actually have a bone room where we’re going to be sawing bone for these unidentified cases,” he says.
The center won’t open for another two years. But this is where authorities will drop off evidence for chemical and DNA analysis.
Van Koughnett’s goal?
“Right now, we’re shooting for 60 to 90 days turn- around time,” he says.
Both Van Koughnett and Wooten say faster test results could improve the entire judicial system across the tri-county.
“Because everyone is suffering all the time,” says Wooten. “They’re sitting there waiting and waiting and waiting.”
Once open, the center will allow authorities to identify suspects and victims sooner so their investigations can proceed. Court cases can be heard more quickly and jail overcrowding my decrease.
And the innocent, like Bryan Getchius won’t have to wait so long to be exonerated.
“That’d be a huge blessing,” says Getchius. “I think that would have changed the game for me.”
Getchius had to wait one year, four months and 28 days to clear his name. He says he's stayed clean from heroin.
