The split verdict separated the fatal shooting and firearm conduct from one charge tied to the confrontation that preceded Earl Goodwater’s death.
MONCKS CORNER, S.C. — A Berkeley County jury convicted Joshua Scott-Lee Butler of murder and two firearm crimes in the 2023 killing of Earl Goodwater but found him not guilty of second-degree domestic violence, producing a mixed verdict before a judge sentenced Butler to 45 years in prison.
The verdict is notable because jurors accepted the state’s murder case while declining to convict on every accusation placed before them. Prosecutors presented testimony that Butler struck his then-fiancée in the face before her father intervened, but the jury acquitted him on the domestic-violence count. It convicted him of murdering Goodwater, pointing and presenting a firearm at another person, and possessing a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. Circuit Court Judge Courtney Clyburn-Pope later imposed 45 years for murder and five years on each firearm offense, with all three sentences running concurrently.
That combination puts the jury’s fact-finding at the center of the case. The panel did not have to treat the night as one indivisible event. Instead, it returned different answers on different criminal counts arising from a confrontation that unfolded in stages. The murder conviction addressed Goodwater’s death. The pointing-and-presenting conviction concerned a separate witness whom Butler was accused of threatening with the handgun. The weapon-possession count attached to the use or possession of a firearm during a violent crime. The acquittal on domestic violence meant prosecutors did not secure a conviction on the allegation involving Butler’s fiancée, even though her account formed a key part of the chronology that led to Goodwater’s involvement.
According to trial reporting, Butler and his then-fiancée arrived at her parents’ Goose Creek home around 10 p.m. on May 13, 2023, after an argument that had begun at another family gathering. Prosecutors said the dispute continued in the driveway and that Butler struck the woman in the face, leaving swelling and a cut inside her mouth. One of the couple’s children was present, the state said. The woman and Butler then went inside the Goodwater home to retrieve their 1-year-old child. Inside, she called for help from her father. Those allegations provided the background for the next confrontation, but the jury’s acquittal requires care in describing the domestic-violence count as an allegation that did not result in a conviction.
Goodwater’s intervention quickly became a fight between the two men, according to the prosecution’s account. Testimony indicated that Goodwater told his daughter to leave Butler alone before the physical confrontation moved from the house into the front yard. Family members separated the men. The prosecution later highlighted that break because what happened next was not described as a weapon appearing unexpectedly in the middle of an uninterrupted brawl. Butler went to his vehicle, retrieved a 9 mm handgun and returned toward the house, prosecutors said. That sequence gave jurors a basis to consider Butler’s conduct after he had been pulled away from Goodwater as a distinct phase of the night.
A second person then became the focus of the gun. According to trial testimony, Butler pointed the firearm at the witness’s stomach. The witness put his hands up and said, “I’m not afraid to die,” an effort that prosecutors said was intended to draw attention away from Goodwater, his daughter and children nearby. Butler moved past the witness and returned toward Goodwater. That incident supported the pointing-and-presenting charge on which the jury convicted him. South Carolina law makes it a felony to point or present a loaded or unloaded firearm at another person, with a possible prison term of up to five years.
The encounter with Goodwater resumed near the front porch. Prosecutors said Butler placed the older man in a headlock while still holding the gun. A single shot was fired, fatally striking Goodwater in the face. Authorities said the injury likely killed him immediately. The jury’s murder verdict meant it found the evidence sufficient for the homicide charge ultimately brought by prosecutors, rather than the lesser theory used at the beginning of the investigation. South Carolina defines murder as the killing of a person with malice aforethought. State law sets punishment for murder at a mandatory minimum of 30 years up to life when the death penalty is not imposed.
The distinction between the opening charge and the final conviction shows how the case developed over more than three years. In May 2023, the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office announced that Butler had been charged with voluntary manslaughter and second-degree domestic violence after the shooting. Early reports described Goodwater as having intervened in an altercation involving his daughter and Butler and said the fatal shot occurred during a struggle over a handgun. They also reported that Butler was shot in the arm. As the investigation and prosecution moved forward, the homicide case was elevated to murder. The 2026 jury then convicted on that more serious charge after hearing the evidence presented at trial.
Butler’s actions after the shooting were also part of the public record. Prosecutors said he left the scene with his 4-year-old daughter and returned a short time later, when Berkeley County sheriff’s deputies arrested him. The original emergency response began shortly before 10:30 p.m., when deputies were sent to Westminster Boulevard for a dispute and were advised while en route that a man had been shot. Goodwater was pronounced dead at the scene. Those first hours generated a preliminary account that was necessarily narrower than the trial record later presented to jurors, underscoring why early charging decisions did not remain the final word.
Sentencing converted the jury’s findings into a single controlling prison term. Clyburn-Pope imposed 45 years for murder, which exceeds South Carolina’s statutory 30-year mandatory minimum. The judge also imposed five years for the firearm-possession offense and five years for pointing and presenting a firearm, but ordered those terms to run at the same time as the murder sentence. South Carolina’s weapons code authorizes a five-year punishment for possessing a firearm during a violent crime and permits that term to run concurrently or consecutively. In Butler’s case, the concurrent structure means the 45-year murder sentence sets the length of the announced prison term.
For Goodwater’s family, the legal distinctions arrived after a loss that had already reshaped their lives. His obituary identified him as Earl David Goodwater, 53, of Goose Creek. He was married, had six children and was a grandfather. He worked as a crane operator with the South Carolina Ports Authority. His family held a celebration of life at Olive Branch A.M.E. Church on May 20, 2023, a week after the shooting, and he was buried at Mt. Pleasant Memorial Gardens. The prosecution later emphasized that he entered the confrontation after his daughter called for help, making his role as a father central to the state’s account of why the encounter began.
Assistant Solicitor Michelle Hart said after the case that Goodwater “stepped up to protect his daughter and grandchildren.” She described Butler’s conduct as a series of decisions, stressing that he had been separated from Goodwater before going to the car for a gun and returning. Her statement focused on the point between the initial fight and the armed confrontation, the same sequence that separated the state’s murder theory from a description of a single spontaneous struggle. The jury’s mixed verdict, however, remains important: It held Butler criminally responsible for Goodwater’s murder and the two gun offenses while rejecting the second-degree domestic-violence charge.
The result now stands as a 45-year murder sentence with concurrent five-year terms on the firearm convictions. The latest reports reviewed for this story did not identify a scheduled appeal hearing or other post-trial proceeding. Unless a court later changes the judgment, Butler’s convictions are for murder, pointing and presenting a firearm, and possession of a weapon during a violent crime, while the domestic-violence charge ended in an acquittal.
Author note: Last updated October 19, 2026.