Today, the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned the murder conviction of the drug-addicted lawyer Alex Murdaugh for shooting his wife and youngest son to death. Prosecutors plan to retry Murdaugh.
“In a unanimous ruling Wednesday, the South Carolina Supreme Court said the conduct by the court clerk ‘egregiously attacked Murdaugh’s credibility’ by suggesting to jurors his testimony could not be trusted. They also said the trial judge went too far in allowing evidence of Murdaugh’s financial crimes into his murder trial.”
Murdaugh will not be walking free. He is 57 and is serving a 40-year federal prison sentence for stealing $12 million from his clients, for which he pled guilty in U.S. District Court. Federal prisoners are not eligible for parole, although they can be released most of the way through their sentence for good behavior, if they received earned sentence credits. So he may die in prison.
Murdaugh “admits to being a thief, liar, insurance cheat and bad lawyer, but has adamantly denied killing his wife Maggie and younger son Paul since he found their bodies outside their home in 2021. The justices ruled Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill, assigned to oversee the evidence and the jury during the trial, influenced jurors to find Murdaugh guilty. She hoped to improve sales of a book she was writing about the case. The name of the book was ‘Behind the Doors of Justice: The Murdaugh Murders.’ It was pulled from publication after plagiarism allegations were made. ‘As her book’s title suggests, it turns out Hill was quite busy behind the doors of justice, thwarting the integrity of the justice system she was sworn to protect and uphold,'” the South Carolina Supreme Court explained in a 27-page per curiam ruling.
The court clerk pled guilty to perjury charges, for “lying about what she said and did to a different judge.”
“Murdaugh’s lawyers also argued before the high court that the judge at his 2023 trial made rulings that prevented a fair trial, such as allowing evidence of Murdaugh stealing from clients that had nothing to do with the killings but biased jurors against him….Prosecutors argued that the clerk’s comments were fleeting and the evidence against Murdaugh was overwhelming. His lawyer said that didn’t matter because the comments a juror said she made — urging jurors to watch Murdaugh’s body language and listen to his testimony carefully — removed his presumption of innocence before the jury ever deliberated.”
