J. C. Nicholson

Nicholson received widespread notice for his ruling in State v. Jones, a case in which a woman was charged with the murder of her boyfriend. In November 2012, the couple had a dispute at their shared residence; when Jones attempted to leave, her boyfriend punched her and grabbed her by the hair, and she stabbed him. In a pre-trial immunity hearing, Nicholson ruled that the state's "stand-your-ground" statute, the Protection of Property and Persons Act, gave Jones immunity for the killing of her boyfriend. The law protects the actions of a person who uses deadly force and "who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in another place where he has a right to be"; prosecutors had argued that the phrase "another place" should not include a home in which the attacker resided, but Nicholson disagreed, stating in his ruling that prosecutors' reading of the law would create a "nonsensical result" in which a person could defend him- or herself against an intimate partner's attack outside of the home but not within it.[4]

Prosecutors criticized Nicholson's ruling and indicated their intent to appeal, as it also affected two other outstanding cases.[4] Amanda Marcotte, writing in Slate, praised the ruling, stating that while she found stand-your-ground laws to be problematic, "if a state insists on having them, they should be applied evenly and fairly".[5] However, a Salon column by Jenny Kutner disagreed with Nicholson's reading of the law, noting that the "presumption of fear" required for a use of deadly force to be found lawful did not apply within the home; Kutner stated that Jones' case instead demonstrated the need for South Carolina to pass new laws which protected survivors of domestic violence.[6]

In 2015, Nicholson was assigned as presiding judge for the trial of Dylann Roof, who is charged with committing the Charleston church shooting on June 17 that year. Nicholson set Roof's trial date for July 11, 2016.[7] Nicholson's gag order in the case, forbidding the release of photographs of victims and recordings of 9-1-1 calls under the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act, has been challenged by news media, while survivors and victims' families have spoken in favor of maintaining it. A hearing on the gag order will be held at an indeterminate date in the future.[8] Nicholson has also ordered Roof to provide handwriting samples to verify whether he wrote notes that "contain evidence of guilt and motive".[9]