LEXINGTON, S.C. (Court TV) — Attorneys for Alex Murdaugh have filed a new memorandum asking a judge to dismiss murder indictments against the disgraced attorney because, they say, prosecutors “fabricated evidence.”
Alex Murdaugh sits in court at a pretrial hearing on Oct. 16, 2026. (Court TV)
Murdaugh, 58, is facing a second trial on charges that he murdered his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, and son, Paul Murdaugh. Murdaugh was initially convicted of murder and sentenced to two life terms, but the South Carolina Supreme Court ordered that he get a new trial after finding that the clerk of court made inappropriate comments to the jury during his trial.
In a new memo filed in support of their motion to dismiss, Murdaugh’s attorneys claimed that the state obtained murder indictments against their client by lying about evidence to the grand jury.
The filing focuses on two key pieces of evidence: a shirt that the defendant was wearing when he said he found the bodies of his wife and son, and the ammunition and weapon used to kill his son.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) led the investigation into the killings, with agent David Owen assigned as the lead case agent. In front of the grand jury, Owen testified that the shirt Murdaugh had been wearing when he found the victims was covered in their blood spatter. But Murdaugh’s attorneys said in their filing that SLED’s laboratory confirmed 11 months before Owen testified that there was “no human blood on the shirt.”
Murdaugh’s attorneys cited documents they say show that after determining there was no human blood on the shirt, agents searched for an expert who would give them a different answer.
In an interview with Murdaugh before his arrest, Owen told the defendant that the ammunition used to kill one of the victims had been found loaded in similar shotguns found on the property. At Murdaugh’s trial, Owen conceded that the information wasn’t true, but explained that the law allowed him to use “trickery” when interviewing a suspect. But Murdaugh’s attorneys said Owen told the same story to the grand jury. “A statement the witness knew to be false in August was not an honest error in November,” the defense motion said. “The law permits an interrogating officer, within limits, to deceive a suspect. It permits no one to deceive a grand jury. Nor was the falsehood incidental. The shotgun that killed Paul Murdaugh has never been recovered.”
Murdaugh’s defense asked for the murder indictments to be dismissed without prejudice. “Mr. Murdaugh does not ask the Court to bar the State from prosecuting him as the sanction for presenting fabricated evidence to the Colleton County Grand Jury,” the defense wrote. “He asks the Court to dismiss the indictments that the fabricated evidence procured, without prejudice, so that the State stands where it stood in July 2022, before Agent Owen walked into the grand jury room: free to seek true bills, on competent evidence, from a grand jury that has not been deceived.”
The defense filing noted that Owen’s misstatements led to charges being dismissed in another high-profile murder trial. Moments before opening statements were scheduled to begin in Michael Colucci‘s murder trial, the judge dismissed the case after finding that Owen failed to document a key statement from the victim’s mother.
Both sides will argue the motion to dismiss on Nov. 13; Murdaugh’s retrial is scheduled to begin in April 2027 in Sumter County.
