SC mother approved for parole 8 years after fatally stabbing her abuser

South Carolina’s parole board on Wednesday approved releasing a Greenwood mother who’s spent nearly six years in prison for killing her abuser.

The 4-2 vote to parole Tiffany Janae Carroll followed a years-long effort by her family, her second grade teacher, and two GOP legislators. Backing their request, again, were the law enforcement offices that put Carroll in prison, which Rep. John McCravy said illustrates the rarity of the situation.

“If anyone ever needed to get paroled, it’s her,” said the Greenwood Republican, who noted “I’ve never advocated for anyone to get out on parole in my life except her.”

For the 38-year-old mother, the fourth time was the charm. Last year’s hearing ended one vote shy of the supermajority needed.

Her release could be days away — potentially in time to spend Thanksgiving with her five children, who range in age from 6 to 18.

That’s the hope anyway, said her attorney, Rep. Travis Moore.

SC woman who killed her abuser again denied parole after nearly 5 years in prison

“She’s looking forward to seeing her kids,” said Moore, R-Roebuck, a former prosecutor who took on his first parole case for free.

Carroll and Moore again appeared before the parole board virtually from the women’s prison in Columbia.

For the fourth time, no one attended to oppose her release, McCravy told the SC Daily Gazette.

Technically, Carroll was granted “conditional parole.”

Before she’s released, local parole officers must verify that she has a suitable home and employment lined up. Moore provided address options, including the homes of her sister, and an aunt and uncle. A catering business has offered her a job. If that falls through, McCravy told the board, he’ll hire her at his law office. He also offered the use of an old car.

The parole board was left with no excuses, said Moore, who lives in Spartanburg County but has family in Greenwood.

Her sentence

Whether Carroll killed her then-partner, 27-year-old William Jamal Johnson, was never in question. She pleaded guilty but mentally ill to manslaughter in December 2019 for fatally stabbing him.

But her supporters contend her 15-year sentence represented injustice, considering the abuse she endured.

Law enforcement officers responded to their home eight times between May 2016, a month before their son was born, and Johnson’s death, court records show.

Accounts vary on exactly what happened that day in September 2017, after the couple started arguing. At her first parole hearing, she told the board she was trying to leave “when he leaped out at me and hit me again.” She’s said she doesn’t remember what happened next.

What’s not disputed in the legal record is that Carroll at some point got a knife from the kitchen, cut him on the arm and ankle and stabbed him in the chest. After realizing what she’d done, she tried to save his life, applying pressure to his wounds. He died at the local hospital.

A month before Carroll’s sentencing, a psychologist diagnosed her with post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder linked to severe domestic violence, also known as “battered woman syndrome.”

A manslaughter conviction usually requires inmates to serve at least a third of their sentence before coming up for parole. But at sentencing, then-Circuit Court Judge Letitia Verdin (now a state Supreme Court justice) permitted Carroll to be eligible after serving 25% of her 15-year sentence. That’s why she first came up for parole in 2022.

While in prison, Carroll has “availed herself to every program and opportunity to better herself,” Moore said.

That includes taking virtual classes through Claflin University, earning several work certificates, and working at the prison laundry. Her record shows no discipline problems.

Still, South Carolina’s parole board very rarely approves early release for any inmate.

Community support

People who sent letters of support again included the police chief of the department that charged her and the solicitor who prosecuted her case.

“Mrs. Carroll’s case exemplifies someone who deserves another chance,” Greenwood Police Chief TJ Chaudoin wrote in a Sept. 9 letter to the parole board, echoing what he wrote last year.

Solicitor David Stumbo, who’s running for attorney general in 2026, maintains his office made the right decisions: Johnson’s death did not legally support a self-defense argument, despite the couple’s history and Carroll being a victim in the past. And the guilty-but-mentally-ill plea to manslaughter, down from the original murder charge, was “proper under the facts of the case,” he wrote in a separate letter to the board dated Sept. 9.

However, “we are confident that this incident of violence was isolated to Ms. Carroll’s particular situation at the time as a battered woman, and she is not the type of offender that would pose a danger to our community at large,” wrote the chief prosecutor for Abbeville, Greenwood, Newberry and Laurens counties.

Based on the outpouring of community support and the “unique circumstances that her case presents … I strongly support her application for parole,” he concluded in a repeat of what he wrote last year.

Asked what made the difference, McCravy gave credit to God.

“I think the Lord did. I think prayer did,” he said. “Our whole community was praying.”