In the Matter of the Care and Treatment of Andy Eugene Hyman

── In the Matter of the Care and Treatment of Andy Eugene Hyman ── Court: Supreme Court of South Carolina Date: May 13, 2026 Category: General THE STATE OF SOUTH CAROLINA In The Supreme Court In the Matter of the Care and Treatment of Andy Eugene Hyman, Respondent. Appellate Case No. 2024-001781 ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE COURT OF APPEALS Appeal from Florence County Roger E. Henderson, Circuit Court Judge Opinion No. 28330 Heard December 16, 2025 – Filed May 13, 2026 AFFIRMED Attorney General Alan McCrory Wilson and Assistant Attorney General Christopher Runyan, both of Columbia, for Petitioner. Senior Appellate Defender Lara Mary Caudy, of Columbia, for Respondent. David Allen Chaney, Jr. and Meredith Dyer McPhail, both of Columbia, as Amicus Curiae for The American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina. CHIEF JUSTICE KITTREDGE: In sexually violent predator commitment proceedings, the South Carolina Office of Mental Health (OMH) is statutorily required to perform a pre-commitment evaluation. See S.C. Code Ann. § 44-48-80(D) (2018). Here, OMH—the State's usual expert—determined that Respondent Andy Hyman was not a sexually violent predator (SVP). In response, the State turned to the Sexual Behavior Clinic and Lab at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) for a second opinion. See S.C. Code Ann. § 44-48-80(D), -90(C) (2018) (permitting the party dissatisfied with the results of OMH's initial evaluation to seek a second opinion). MUSC opined that Hyman was an SVP. The difference in the two conflicting expert opinions largely boiled down to the use of the controversial penile plethysmography test (PPG): MUSC regularly performs the test and uses its results to support classifying an offender as an SVP, whereas OMH rejects any notion that the PPG is a valid or reliable assessment for SVP pre-commitment evaluations. Broadly speaking, the PPG is an attempt to objectively quantify an inherently subjective experience: male sexual arousal. Hyman sought to exclude the PPG evidence in his case, arguing PPGs in general were fundamentally unreliable and lacked the level of standardization requisite in scientific testing. The trial court rejected Hyman's arguments, finding the PPG was a reliable scientific test that objectively quantified Hyman's arousal. The jury found Hyman was an SVP. On appeal, the court of appeals reversed, holding in accordance with the clear majority rule that the trial court abused its discretion when it found the PPG constituted reliable scientific evidence. Because of the widespread controversy currently surrounding the use of the PPG as an assessment tool for SVP purposes, we granted the State's petition for a writ of certiorari to review the court of appeals' decision. The PPG procedures employed here by MUSC highlight the glaring lack of standardization prevalent in both the protocols for the test and the analysis of the results—a problem that necessarily prevents any finding of reliability. We hold that PPG results are generally inadmissible in judicial proceedings unless and until the underlying science is more thoroughly developed, thus creating a more structurally sound path for a court to find PPG results are reliable and admissible. Our holding today follows the overwhelming majority rule. As a result, we affirm the court of appeals' decision reversing the trial court and remand the matter for a new commitment proceeding. I. To contextualize the facts of this case, we first describe the PPG in more detail. The PPG is designed to measure a man's sexual response to a series of visual and auditory stimuli, with the theoretical goal of objectively discerning whether a man has deviant sexual interests. The procedure—which some courts have described as Orwellian 1 and others as "especially unpleasant an