WALTERBORO, S.C. (Court TV) — Attorneys representing disgraced attorney Alex Murdaugh have filed a flurry of motions ahead of the first court appearance in the case after his conviction was overturned.
Alex Murdaugh appears in court on Jan. 29, 2024. (Tracy Glantz/The State via AP, Pool)
Murdaugh, 57, had been sentenced to two life terms after a jury convicted him of murdering his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, and son, Paul Murdaugh. The South Carolina Supreme Court overturned that conviction in May after determining that Rebecca “Becky” Hill, who was the Colleton County Clerk of Court during Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial, had tainted the jury by making improper comments about the defendant and his testimony.
As they prepare to retry the case, Alex Murdaugh’s attorneys have filed a new motion highlighting DNA evidence. The motion requests an order that requires prosecutors to produce DNA evidence for independent laboratory review. The defendant claims in the motion that DNA collected from under Maggie Murdaugh’s fingernails at the crime scene was “from an unknown and unrelated male.” While Alex Murdaugh’s defense says no further analysis was performed on the sample, his team feels it could be crucial to proving their client’s innocence. The motion says that his team has been in touch with Othram, the same company whose Investigative Genetic Genealogy technology cracked open the case against Bryan Kohberger; the company believes it can conduct a thorough analysis of the sample, “but the testing takes considerable time, and a ‘rush’ order would be needed.”
Alex Murdaugh’s team is also pushing to move the retrial out of Colleton County, the site of the first trial. “This is among the most heavily publicized criminal prosecutions in the history of this State,” the motion says. It asks for the trial to be moved out of the 14th circuit, which encompasses Allendale, Beaufort, Colleton, Hampton and Jasper counties, “where the Murdaugh name has been synonymous with the local legal system for nearly a century, where the population is small and interconnected, and where the very documentaries, books, and films that have shaped public opinion were researched, filmed and produced.”
When the defense filed a motion for Alex Murdaugh to appear at future hearings unshackled and in normal clothing, prosecutors came back swinging. “The first two steps of any escape attempt are to become unrestrained and to get into civilian clothes,” they wrote in their response. They pointed to two instances in 2023 of disciplinary actions behind bars to say that Murdaugh “has demonstrated that he will break the rules and circumvent security if given the chance.”
Those infractions, the defense responded, only merited a 30-day loss of telephone privileges. In their reply to the state, Alex Murdaugh’s attorneys said they were withdrawing their request that he appear in street clothes and without shackles. “Mr. Murdaugh does not want to create a distraction for the Court or even for the State,” they wrote. “Mr. Murdaugh has admitted his many serious financial crimes, and he accepts the consequences of those crimes — decades of imprisonment, probably for the remainder of his life — without complaint. If the State wants to use that for a public spectacle, so be it.”
Despite the murder convictions being overturned, Alex Murdaugh remains behind bars serving a 27-year state sentence for financial crimes and a concurrent 40-year federal sentence for similar crimes.
Alex Murdaugh is expected to appear at his first hearing since the conviction was overturned on Monday.
