ENOREE, S.C. (AP) — The sun makes a grand display in one of the ugliest of places.

Gold light bathes men playing basketball and gleams on the barbed wire that separates them from the outside. It’s Monday. E.C. Burnett III and three friends are here for their weekly visit.

The men are part of a Bible study ministry at Mt. Calvary Presbyterian Church. Every Monday, they make the drive to Tyger River Correctional Institution in Enoree for a Monday night worship service. They may be the only visitors some inmates have at the medium-security prison.

Burnett served as a judge in circuit, family and probate courts. He was serving as a state Supreme Court justice when he announced his retirement from the bench in September 2007.

“I’ve been there a long time,” Burnett said at the time. “There are so many other things that need to be done — the usual and the unusual — and it’s time to go and do those other things.”

Burnett said he would spend part of his retirement leading Bible studies. He felt a “burden” to minister to inmates. Some were the very souls he sentenced for crimes. He became involved with prison ministry in 2008.

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