Arrested in Greer, SC? Arrested DUI drivers only have 30 days to save their driver’s license, so contacting Scott Todd for a FREE lawyer consultation would be a very smart move.
The criminal defense lawyers at the law office of Sumner & Todd have been defending drivers of motor vehicles on traffic crimes for over three decades. Our Firm limits our criminal law cases to the 10 Upstate SC counties, and can defend those accused criminal law arrestees throughout those 10 counties.
That includes Greer, South Carolina — in Greer Municipal Court, as well as in both the Spartanburg County magistrate court and the Greenville County magistrate court. In addition, if a jury trial for a felony is needed, an award-winning attorney from our firm will represent you in the Courts of General Sessions in either Greenville or Spartanburg. The “venue” of your case depends on which county your traffic violation occurred in.
Call (864) 235-3834 for a free, confidential consultation. We answer 24/7.
Few cities in the Upstate create as much confusion for an arrested person as Greer, SC. Greer is one city, but it sits in two counties, is patrolled by four different law enforcement agencies, and feeds cases into two separate circuit court systems. Two neighbors arrested on the same night, three miles apart, can end up in completely different courthouses in front of completely different judges and solicitors. Choosing among the lawyers in Greer, SC who actually try cases in both systems is not a small detail — it shapes everything from your bond hearing to your final disposition.
Why a Greer Case Is Never Just One Case: Greenville County and Spartanburg County
Greer has grown to roughly 46,300 residents as of the Census Bureau’s July 2024 estimate — up sharply from the 35,308 counted in the 2020 Census — and that growth straddles a county line. A majority of the city of Greer, SC lies in Greenville County, SC. A smaller eastern portion, running out along Wade Hampton Boulevard, lies in Spartanburg County, SC. The Greenville–Spartanburg International Airport (GSP) and the BMW Manufacturing plant on Highway 101 sit at that seam, in and around Greer’s eastern edge.
That geography matters because jurisdiction follows the location of the traffic stop:
- Greer Police Department (101 West Poinsett Street) enforces city ordinances and state traffic law inside the city limits, on both sides of the county line.
- Greenville County Sheriff’s Office has countywide authority over the Greenville County portion of Greer.
- Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office has the same authority over the Spartanburg County portion.
- SC Highway Patrol and SLED work every state road running through town — I-85, SC-14, US-29/Wade Hampton Boulevard, and SC-101.
An experienced Greer lawyer reads the incident report first for the agency and the mile marker, because those two facts determine which prosecutor’s office holds your file, which discovery practices apply, and what diversion programs are realistically available to you.
Where Your Greer DUI Arrest Case Will Be Heard
| Court | Location | What It Handles |
|---|---|---|
| Greer Municipal Court | 100 S. Main Street, Greer, SC 29650 | Misdemeanors and traffic offenses inside city limits, capped at a $500 fine and/or 30 days. Criminal & Traffic Court runs Wednesdays. |
| Greenville County Magistrate Court (Greer) | 320 West Main Street, Taylors, SC 29687 | Summary offenses, traffic tickets, bond hearings, preliminary hearings |
| Spartanburg County Magistrate Court (Greer) | 180 Magnolia Street, Spartanburg, SC 29306 | Same, for the Magistrate’s Courts in Spartanburg County on that side of the city |
| Greenville County General Sessions | 305 E. North Street, Greenville (13th Judicial Circuit) | Felonies: felony DUI, drug trafficking, serious offenses |
| Spartanburg County General Sessions | 180 Magnolia Street, Spartanburg, SC 29306 (7th Judicial Circuit) | Felonies arising on the Spartanburg County side |
Our office is at 112 Manly Street in Greenville — roughly 20 minutes from downtown Greer — and we appear in every one of these courtrooms.
Greer DUI Defense: The 30-Day Clock Starts at the Time of Arrest
A DUI arrest in South Carolina creates two different cases. One is civil in nature and is sometimes called the “implied consent” aspect of a DUI arrest.
This separate administrative law attack on your ability to keep driving focuses on the driver’s post-arrest refusal to submit to breath testing, or providing a sample of .15 or greater. This time-sensitive issue must be addressed before the DUI criminal case can go to court.
The criminal law charge for driving under the influence is where a driver is at risk of going to jail, paying fines and surcharges and possibly suffering a driver’s license suspension. But any person who procrastinates and does not IMMEDIATELY take action on protecting his or her right to obtain a limited permit to drive may regret that for years afterward.
A driver who fails to promptly act can lose his or her driver’s license even if that person eventually beats the criminal charge. Scott Todd, a Greer DUI lawyer who was previously a prosecutor before switching to handling criminal defense cases several years ago, will fight both legal issues at once to help that driver obtain the best available outcome.
If you refused the post-arrest Datamaster breath test, or took that post-arrest test and blew 0.15 grams % or higher, the SCDMV will file paperwork seeking to suspend your SC driver’s license immediately. Under S.C. Code § 56-5-2951(B), you have ONLY 30 days to request a contested-case administrative hearing before the South Carolina Office of Motor Vehicle Hearings, a statewide division of the Administrative Law Court.
By making this request in time you also can obtain a temporary alcohol license [sometimes abbreviated as (“TAL”)] and thereby keep limited driving privileges while your case is pending. Letting those 30 days pass and allowing that suspension to be imposed on a DUI refusal case carries a minimum six-month suspension. In addition, a test result of 0.15 grams percent or higher brings its own minimum driver’s license suspension, independent of any refusal.
South Carolina DUI Penalties — § 56-5-2930
| Offense | BAC under .10 | BAC .10–.15 | BAC .16 and above |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st offense | $400 fine or 48 hrs–30 days | $500 fine or 72 hrs–30 days | $1,000 fine or 30–90 days |
| 2nd offense | $2,100–$5,100 and 5 days–1 year | $2,500–$5,500 and 30 days–2 years | $3,500–$6,500 and 90 days–3 years |
| 3rd offense | $3,800–$6,300 and 60 days–3 years | $5,000–$7,500 and 90 days–4 years | $7,500–$10,000 and 6 months–5 years |
| 4th offense | 1 to 5 years of imprisonment — a felony, with a permanent license revocation | ||
Suspensions run six months on a first offense, one year on a second, and two years on a third (four years if the third comes within five years of the first). Vehicle confiscation is possible on a third or subsequent DUI within ten years. Every conviction requires ADSAP enrollment under § 56-5-2930(H).
Three additional exposures catch Greer drivers off guard:
- DUAC — § 56-5-2933. South Carolina’s “per se” offense. A BAC of 0.08 gr. % alone supports a conviction. For these types of cases, the State never has to prove that your driving ability was actually impaired.
- Ignition interlock for everyone — § 56-5-2941. Since South Carolina’s all-offender law took effect on May 19, 2024, every DUI-related conviction requires that the driver pay for and install a camera-equipped interlock device, and not just the high-BAC cases or the repeat offender DUI cases.
- Felony DUI — § 56-5-2945. If someone (other than the accused DUI driver) is seriously hurt in an impaired driving crash of any type, the mandatory range for fines is a $5,100–$10,100 fine and serving between 30 days to 15 years in custody. In such crashes, if someone dies, the fine will be between $10,100–$25,100 and requires between 1 and 25 years in jail. Plus, SC DUI laws allow no probation for the mandatory portion imposed by the sentencing judge.
The Hard Truth About Expungement: You Take a DUI Conviction to the Grave
A DUI or DUAC conviction in South Carolina can never be expunged. There is no waiting period that erases it or “ages off” these convictions. No clean-record petition for restricting that from criminal records is possible.
The only path to obtain a record that you can eventually clear is to keep the DUI from becoming a DUI conviction in the first place — through:
- suppression of an unlawful stop, or a defective videotape under the recording statute, or
- successfully making a challenge to the DataMaster breath alcohol test results, or
- obtaining a case dismissal, or
- for your attorney to obtain a negotiated reduction from DUI to another offense that is itself eligible for relief or record restriction in the future.
That is precisely why the quality of your defense in the first 30 days matters more than anything that happens later.
Greer Trafficking Lawyer: Mandatory Minimums With No Way Around Them
Drug charges arising on the I-85 corridor through Greer are prosecuted aggressively, and trafficking under S.C. Code §§ 44-53-370(e) and 44-53-375 is unlike almost any other charge in the state. Trafficking is weight-based. The State does not have to prove you intended to sell anything — it only has to prove the quantity. And every trafficking sentence carries the statutory language “no part of which may be suspended nor probation granted.” At the higher tiers the statute also strips eligibility for parole, extended work release, and supervised furlough.
| Substance | Trafficking threshold | First-offense exposure |
|---|---|---|
| Marijuana | 10 lbs | 10–100 lbs: 1–10 years and $10,000; 100+ lbs: mandatory 25 years |
| Cocaine / crack | 10 grams | 10–28 g: 3–10 years and $25,000; 28–100 g: 7–25 years and $50,000; 100 g+: mandatory 25 years |
| Methamphetamine / “ice” | 10 grams | Same tiers and penalties as cocaine, under § 44-53-375(C) |
| Heroin / opium | 4 grams | 4–14 g: 7–25 years and $50,000; 14–28 g: mandatory 25 years; 28 g+: 25–40 years |
| Fentanyl | 4 grams | 4–14 g: 7–25 years and $50,000; 14 g+: mandatory 25 years and up |
South Carolina added fentanyl trafficking to the statute in August 2023, along with a sentencing enhancement of up to 20 additional consecutive years where trafficking results in a fatal overdose. A conspiracy conviction under this subsection carries the full sentence for the underlying offense, not the usual half.
Because the numbers are so unforgiving, a Greer trafficking lawyer wins these cases before sentencing or not at all. The defense work is in the Fourth Amendment: the basis for the traffic stop, whether the stop was unlawfully prolonged for a K-9, the validity of consent, the reliability of the search warrant affidavit, the chain of custody, and the accuracy of the weight itself — including whether packaging or non-drug filler was improperly included in the total. Knock the weight below a threshold and the entire mandatory-minimum structure collapses. For first-time simple possession, § 44-53-450 conditional discharge can still produce a dismissal and a later expungement, but it is available only once in a lifetime.
Speeding Tickets and Traffic Violations in Greer
Wade Hampton Boulevard, SC-14, and the I-85 stretch past GSP and BMW are among the most heavily enforced roads in the Upstate. Paying a ticket online feels efficient. It is also a guilty plea, and it puts points on your record, raises your insurance for years, and — if you already have points — can push you into a suspension. The speeding ticket lawyers in Greer, SC at our firm often resolve these matters without the client ever appearing.
Under § 56-5-1520, fines run roughly $15–$25 for 1–10 mph over, $20–$50 for 11–14 over, $50–$75 for 15–24 over, and $75–$200 or up to 30 days in jail for 25+ mph over. The DMV points under § 56-1-720 are usually the real damage:
- 6 points: reckless driving, passing a stopped school bus, hit-and-run with property damage, speeding 25+ mph over
- 4 points: speeding 11–24 mph over, disregarding a traffic control device, failure to yield, improper passing, following too closely
- 2 points: speeding 10 mph or less over, unsafe lane change, improper lane usage
Twelve points triggers an automatic suspension — three months at 12–15 points, up to six months at 20 or more. Points are halved after one year and drop off after two, and an eight-hour National Safety Council defensive driving course removes four points once every three years, but only if completed before a suspension takes effect. A traffic violation lawyer in Greer, SC also handles the charges that carry jail exposure: reckless driving under § 56-5-2920 ($25–$200 or up to 30 days, plus a three-month suspension on a second offense within five years) and driving under suspension under § 56-1-460, where a DUI-related DUS carries a mandatory 10 to 30 days on a first offense and six months to three years on a third.
Why Clients Choose Sumner & Todd
Steve Sumner founded this firm in 1997 after serving as a DUI prosecutor, and built a practice on trying cases rather than pleading them — more than 500 jury trials and 5,000 Upstate clients. Scott Todd joined in 2020 and became a partner in 2021, carrying that same trial-first approach forward. Among the best lawyers in Greer, SC and the surrounding Upstate, few firms are as narrowly focused on impaired driving and serious traffic and drug defense.
- Named a Tier 1 law firm for DUI/DWI Defense by U.S. News & World Report / Best Lawyers, “Best Law Firms” 2026
- Voted Greenville’s Best for DUI Defense in 2025
- Legal Elite of the Upstate — Greenville Business Magazine
- South Carolina Super Lawyers “Rising Stars”; The National Trial Lawyers Top 100
- Rue Rating Best Attorneys of America, Lifetime Charter Member
Not all Greer, SC lawyers handle both sides of the county line with equal comfort. We do. The Greer lawyers at Sumner & Todd know the magistrates on Main Street and on Wade Hampton, the assistant solicitors in both the 7th and 13th Circuits, and how a case actually moves through each system.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will my Greer case be in Greenville County or Spartanburg County?
It depends on where the stop or incident occurred. Most of the city is in Greenville County, SC, so most cases go to the 13th Circuit in Greenville. Incidents in the eastern portion along Wade Hampton Boulevard fall in Spartanburg County, SC and proceed through the 7th Circuit in Spartanburg. Minor offenses inside the city limits may stay in Greer Municipal Court regardless of county.
How long do I have to save my license after a DUI arrest?
Thirty days from the notice of suspension to request an administrative hearing with the Office of Motor Vehicle Hearings. This deadline is separate from your criminal court date and is not extended by it. For a deeper look at how first-offense cases are fought and won, read our guide to first-offense DUI in Upstate South Carolina.
Can a first-offense DUI be reduced in South Carolina?
It can be, depending on the strength of the State’s evidence — the legality of the stop, compliance with the video recording requirements, field sobriety administration, and breath test procedure. Because a DUI conviction can never be expunged, pursuing dismissal or reduction is usually the only path to a record you can later clear. No outcome can be guaranteed.
Should I just pay my speeding ticket online?
Paying is pleading guilty. Then, mandatory added points and the boosted insurance consequences will follow.
Because our Firm provides FREE lawyer advice in an initial consultation, why not have a lawyer look at the ticket first? This is especially important if that ticket alleges traveling at 11 mph or more over the posted legal limit.
Is a trafficking charge negotiable?
The sentence itself is not — mandatory minimums cannot be suspended and probation is unavailable. The charge, however, can be attacked through suppression motions, weight challenges, and constitutional defenses to the stop and search.
Talk to a Greer Lawyer Today — Free Consultation
If you have been charged in Greer, SC, the clock is already running. Call (864) 235-3834 or reach us through our contact page. Sumner & Todd, Attorneys at Law, 112 Manly Street, Greenville, SC 29601. Free initial consultation. Available 24/7.
This page is general information about South Carolina law and is not legal advice. Statutes and penalties change; no attorney-client relationship is created by reading this page, and prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.