A judge ruled that a former South Carolina restaurant manager who forced a Black man with intellectual disabilities to work more than 100 hours a week without pay, owes the former employee more than $500,000.
Bobby Paul Edwards is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for enslaving John Christopher Smith from 2009 to 2014. A former South Carolina restaurant manager has been ordered to pay more than $546,000 in restitution to an employee with intellectual disabilities that he put to work for more than 100 hours a week with no pay. Bobby Paul Edwards, 56 is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for forced labor.
Black man enslaved by White restaurant manager should be awarded more than $500,000, court says Lateshia Beachum Bobby Paul Edwards of Conway, S.C., on Sept. 22. (Horry County Sheriff’s Department) A Black man with intellectual disabilities who was enslaved for five years at a restaurant in Conway, S.C., should be awarded double the amount of restitution from the White man now imprisoned for the crime, according to a recent court ruling. As part of his 2019 guilty plea to a forced labor charge, Bobby Paul Edwards, 56, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered by a court to pay back John Christopher Smith $273,000 in unpaid wages and overtime compensation at J&J Cafeteria.
A former restaurant manager in South Carolina has been ruled to pay an enslaved worker more than $500,000 in damages after he forced the intellectually challenged black man to work for more than 100 hours a week unpaid.
Bobby Paul Edwards, 56, is currently serving his 10-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to the forced labor charges in 2019. Back then, he was ordered by the court to pay $273,000 worth of unpaid wages to John Christopher Smith. The amount also included unpaid overtime compensation at the J&J cafeteria.
However, according to The Hill, on April 21, 2012, the Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit found that the previous amount did not account for the federal labor laws. The court stated that Smith is entitled to double the amount of what he was owned during the time that he was imprisoned in 2009 to 2014, which is about $546,000.