Charleston to use electronic sentencing

CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) - One South Carolina county says a new system to enter in sentences after people are convicted in court should reduce errors that prison officials said have led to sentences longer or shorter than judges intended. Charleston County officials say they started using the electronic sentence sheets earlier this month. Instead of filling out paper forms, judges enter sentencing information on a computer. That data can be shared with prison officials or anyone else to make sure offenders serve their exact sentence. Before, data entry employees had to take the handwritten sentencing sheets from across the state and enter the sentencing data into a computer, which caused mistakes.