The arrest of 26-year-old Devin Mincey in South Carolina was broadcast on the television show Live: PD1 back in August 2019. Two other men were arrested alongside Devin and accused of a high-profile bank robbery in Richland County.
Even though video evidence of the crime ran on local news and a reality television show, Devin has not yet been found guilty of the crimes he was accused of.
Right now, Devin is still being held without bond waiting in the Richland County jail for his day in court.
Because of the way the court system works in South Carolina, Devin has not had a preliminary hearing. After reviewing all available court records, the only instances I found where the state presented evidence were when a magistrate judge signed his initial arrest warrant and another denied his bond at the county jail.
Devin says he has not appeared before a judge since he was initially denied bond.
According to conversations I’ve had with Devin, who is represented by the public defender’s office, he believes his extended pre-trial detention is because the prosecution wants him to testify against his co-defendant, Devanta Boyd, which he has refused to do.
Devin has been writing letters from jail to everyone he can think of to try and get attention to his lengthy incarceration. Still, he said he has felt like there has been no movement on his case.
“I’m in limbo,” he told me, through a phone booth. He described his conditions at Alvin S. Glenn as like “hell.”
In a letter to the federal courts filed on Oct. 20, 2025, he wrote:
In arrest warrants, law enforcement accused three men involved in the bank robbery with shooting at deputies — Devanta, Devin and a third man Daniel Williams. They were charged with kidnapping and attempted murder. Video evidence aired on the television channel Reelz shows at least one man shooting at deputies’ in their vehicles.
Devin was accused by law enforcement of being the getaway driver in the bank robbery. Daniel, who was represented by a private criminal defense attorney, was shot by deputies during the chase. Last year, he pled guilty to his role in the crime and was sentenced to 11 years in state prison.
Evidence shows that people who are held without bond are more likely to feel pressure to plead guilty or work with the prosecution. On top of this, the violence Devin describes during his time at the jail is harrowing.
According to a U.S. Department of Justice civil rights investigation, the rate of violence at the Richland County jail is among some of the worst in the country — worse than jails in Miami-Dade County and about equal to New York City jails.
Devin said during his time at Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center, he has lacked proper medical care, has been denied access to the shower, has had to walk through toilet sludge, and has dealt with staph infections that went untreated.
When we spoke for the first time, one of the first things he wanted to tell me was about someone he heard die next to him in the Juliet dorm.
He listened to them cry for help hours with no intervention from staff. He didn’t know that person had died until the coroner had removed their body the next day and was horrified.
Devin told me about his deteriorating mental health status, nervous breakdowns, and how conditions at the jail have worsened while his rights have continually been violated.
One part of his life that provided him solace — prayer and church — was denied after 2020 and never reinstated. His Bible had been confiscated as contraband. No longer do churches come in and provide Sunday services.
At one point, he was able to access a legal library through a kiosk at the jail — but claims he has not had access to this kiosk since 2020.
Devin said he has been provided lax medical care, and when I spoke with him this week, he said he had an abscess on his leg that doctors told him months ago required a hospital visit. Medical records provided by the jail in court backs up his numerous concerns about his health.
Devin complained to the federal court last year to say that for all the beatings he received at the jail, he never once had medical treatment for his injuries which included black eyes, busted lips, nose bleeds and other bruises.
At some point during his incarceration, Devin said a dentist that visited the jail had pulled a tooth from his mouth haphazardly and failed to extract his entire tooth. He currently has half a tooth in his mouth causing him dental pain.
Devin has been complaining about his medical care, the county’s lack of response to violence, and the denial of his First Amendment right to religious expression for years. He claims he has filed complaints through Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center’s formal systems beginning even earlier.
Devin told me he will be held at the jail until the case against his co-defendant goes to trial because the prosecution wants to see if Devin will testify against Devanta, according to his understanding of his case.
Court records indicate Devanta has delayed trial three times due to conflicts with three court-appointed attorneys. At-Large Circuit Court Judge Jocelyn Newman ordered Devanta to represent himself pro-se in January, and because of this, it’s unclear how long the case will take now.
The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees that someone accused of a crime has a right to a speedy trial. For some states, there are specific statues of how long someone can be held without bond before their case is either forced to go to trial or a defendant can file a motion to get it dismissed.
There are all sorts of reasons justice is not being served when the courts take a 6-year delay to bring a case to trial. For example, evidence gets lost or destroyed on accident and witnesses can be difficult to locate.
Recent research published in Pepperdine Law Review found that nine states, including South Carolina, have no remedy if the speedy trial right is violated.
South Carolina is among only a handful of states that has no statue or rule of criminal procedure that governs speedy trials — even though the right is explicitly stated in the state and U.S. constitution.
“In other words, those states have a constitutional right with no explicit guidance for its courts regarding how or when to enforce the right,” Pepperdine Law Review said.
That means the courts in South Carolina have no statutory guidance on when trials must occur, what kind of delays are acceptable and what happens if someone’s right is determined to have been violated.
South Carolina judges, in this instance, have discretion for determining the right to a speedy trial on a case-by-case basis. But the state case law isn’t very specific either.
For example, a recent decision from the S.C. Court of Appeals2 found that when testing whether someone’s right to a speedy trial was violated, neutral reasons like crowded dockets or negligence were not necessarily a reason to determine that someone’s speedy trial right was violated. That’s based on precedent from the S.C. Supreme Court.
If there was a deliberate delay on the prosecution’s part — then the courts may be more likely to find that someone’s speedy trial right was violated.
From what I can tell, there’s no sort of accountability for judges themselves — who have all the power to speed cases along.
And most notably — the court decision revealed that the length of the delay alone does not violate someone’s right to a speedy trial.
When I asked both the Fifth Circuit Solicitor’s Office and the Public Defender’s Office about what the delay in Devin’s case was, they essentially told me they could not discuss his case and the ongoing legal process. I also reached out to the at-large Circuit Court Judge Jocelyn Newman, who has been handling Devanta’s case, for this story. She did not respond to me.
The problem of long-term, pre-trial detention is not special to Richland County. Live5 reporters in Charleston, Emily Johnson and Michael Allison, found that 35 inmates in Charleston County spent more than 4 years in jail.
One of the longest pre-trial detentions recorded in history was recently identified by Andy Pierrotti, an investigative reporter Atlanta News First.
Maurice Jimmerson was incarcerated for a double homicide and sat in jail for 10 years without a trial. Nearly all of his co-defendants were acquitted by juries years ago, and ultimately, Jimmerson was also acquitted after Pierrotti brought attention to his case.
If you have a complaint about conditions at the jail, give me a call or text at my cell phone number: 910-622-2477. You can also find me on Signal under the username @ColumbiaMuckraker.84
The U.S. Department of Justice asks that anyone with information related to the civil rights investigation call call 1-888-473-3201 or email the department at Community.Glenn@usdoj.gov