A South Carolina jury has found once-prominent attorney Alex Murdaugh guilty on all counts in the deaths of his wife and son.
Jurors deliberated for nearly three hours before convicting him of two counts of murder and two counts of using a weapon during a violent crime. Murdaugh showed little emotion as he read the verdict.
Sentencing is set for Friday at 9:30 a.m. ET.
The 54-year-old took the stand in his own defense. He was found guilty of using a firearm to kill his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and their son, Paul, 22. He died on the night of June 7, 2021, at the family’s sprawling Moselle hunting estate in South Carolina. Low Country area.
Before being barred, Murdaugh was an influential attorney in South Carolina and belonged to one of the state’s most prominent families.
For each murder case, he faces a sentence of 30 years to life imprisonment. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.
Prosecutor Creighton Waters said after the verdict, “Justice was served today.” “It doesn’t matter who your family is. It doesn’t matter how much money you have or what people think you have. It doesn’t matter how prominent you think you are. If If you do wrong, if you break the law, if you commit murder, justice will be done in South Carolina.”
Judge Clifton Newman described the evidence of guilt in the case against Murdaugh as “overwhelming” and denied the defense’s request for a mistrial.
The judge’s comments concluded a six-week trial that captivated South Carolina — and the nation. Media coverage included a live broadcast of the trial, the True Crime podcast, and a documentary on Netflix.
Murdaugh admitted to lying about his presence elsewhere but insisted that he did not kill his wife and son.
Earlier in the day, Murdaugh’s defense team, in its final attempt to keep him from spending decades in prison, made its final arguments in the trial of a dismissed South Carolina attorney accused of the murders of his wife and son.
A defense lawyer for Murdaugh sought to cast doubt on the work of the police and forensic teams, saying they had gone too far in preserving evidence from the crime scene. The defense insisted that Murdaugh’s lie and modification of his alibi stemmed from paranoia induced by his opium addiction.
In response, the prosecution urged jurors to heed “common sense” and “the facts” after hearing copious testimony about Murdaugh’s character.
Prosecutors said the once-influential lawyer lied to those closest to him when he stole millions of dollars from his associates and clients and – in an act of desperation, as his financial pressures mounted – he also fooled his wife and son. made when he killed them.
Murdaugh’s defense says investigators fabricated evidence
Defense attorney Jim Griffin said that law enforcement was biased against Alex Murdaugh from the beginning – adding that they later fabricated evidence against him. Pulling the threads of the prosecution’s case, Griffin said state investigators “failed miserably to investigate this matter.”
If the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, or SLED, had done a “competent job” of gathering evidence, Griffin said, Murdaugh would have been taken off the list of possible suspects long ago.
Griffin said, “Until we find someone else, it will be Alex.” Griffin said that his client’s opium habit made him “an easy target for the SLED”. “They started fabricating evidence against Alex.”
Griffin said that SLED took samples from Alex Murdaugh’s clothing, but never DNA samples from Maggie’s and Paul’s clothing. Once investigators seized on the idea that the tests showed high-velocity blood spatter on Alex Murdaugh’s T-shirt, he said, they refused to dismiss that idea and followed it “with a vengeance”.
But when the state faced mixed results and questions over the tests of Murdaugh’s shirt, Griffin said, they adopted a “Mr. and got into a golf cart “butt-naked, I think,” to drive back home, before visiting his mother.
Griffin alleged a list of failures at the agency, saying the state never explained whether tests were performed on the hairs he said were found on Magee’s fingers. He also faulted the way Magee’s phone was secured after it was found on June 8, accusing investigators of not preventing the device from constantly pinging GPS locations — which, he said, eventually overwrote the data from the night of the murders. done.
As for Murdaugh’s admission of lying, Griffin said his client lied because “that’s what junkies do.” He said that Murdaugh had “a closet full of skeletons” that he did not want to be exposed.
Prosecutors say focus on what’s real
Prosecutor John Meadors – a veteran of murder trials who emerged from retirement earlier this year to join the state’s case – delivered rebuttal closing arguments. In a speech with a dramatic flair, Meadors called on the 12 jurors to witness the lies revealed at the trial, including Murdaugh’s fluctuating alibi.
Meadors said that when Murdaugh testified he did so only to confirm that he was a liar.
“That’s what’s real,” Meaders reiterated as he urged the jury to focus on the facts of the case, not what he deemed to undermine the defense’s efforts. He repeatedly called for “credibility and common sense”.
Meadors also scoffed at the defense’s theory about what happened that night. Meadors said, if Murdaugh did not commit the murders, then some unknown assailant or assailants must have known exactly when he was leaving his wife and son in the doghouse, and would also have known when to hang. The guns will be there – kill style.
“Does this make any sense?” Meadors asked.
He said South Carolina law does not require the state to prove premeditation or motive in a murder case. But, he said, he believes that motive and other elements of the case against Murdaugh have been proven, “no one else could have done it.”
Meaders says of Murdaugh’s dog, “Thank God for Bubba.”
The prosecutor recalled testimony from a friend of Paul’s who said he and Paul had fired their .300 Blackout rifles — prosecutors say was the one used to kill Magee — a second or two from the murders. months ago. Meadors said this proved that the gun, which has not been traced, had recently been in Moselle.
“It’s powerful. You can feel it like rain,” he said.
“It’s an episode of Columbo, except it’s real,” Meadors said, adding that like the killers on that TV detective show, Murdaugh made crucial mistakes.
Meadors concluded by citing “beautiful” and “perfect” testimony obtained from the victims: the video Paul proved his father was lying, and the bullet holes around Maggie’s body that showed the murder weapon was hers. Was a family gun.
“Paul had insurance on him,” Meadors said of the video, in which Maggie and Alex are heard talking about their dog, Bubba, who snatched a chicken in his mouth near the kennels.
“Thank God for Bubba,” Meaders told the jury.
“I think he loved Maggie. I think he loved Paul,” Meadors said, referring to Alex Murdaugh. “But you know what he loved more?”
When Murdaugh’s alleged financial crimes put real pressure on him and threaten his wealthy lifestyle, Meadors said, he showed that he loved himself more. He said that Murdaugh did whatever was necessary to save himself.
Defense hits out at prosecutors’ use of phone data
Minutes before the shooting began, according to prosecutors, Griffin replayed the video taken by Paul at the kennels around 8:44 p.m. This captures Alex, Maggie, and Paul talking about dogs.
Griffin said, “Four minutes later, the state would have you believe that Alex Murdaugh got up and blew his son’s brain out” and killed his wife.
He also sought to sow doubt about the investigators’ findings on the time of death, saying that just because Paul and Maggie’s phones went off around 8:49 p.m. doesn’t mean they were both dead.
Griffin sifted through phone data showing the minutes after 8:49, formulating a theory that the slain mother and son may have set their phones down in the kennels. The orientation change and other movements Maggie’s phone recorded, he said, may have indicated she was still holding her phone — or perhaps that the “bad guy” had it.
Defense says Murdaugh would never kill his wife and son
Griffin reiterated the witness testimony, describing Murdaugh as a loving husband and father. As for the allegations of financial impropriety at Murdaugh’s law firm on the morning of June 7, 2021, Griffin stressed that it was no different from any other day in the “raging” life of Alex Murdaugh.
Griffin said the pressure on his client has mounted. The attorney said that when Murdaugh finally felt the pressure, he took steps to end his own life in September by asking his cousin to shoot him.
Griffin began his statement with an overview of the criminal legal system, comparing the trial to an instant-replay review in college football. Despite the charges against Murdaugh, he told jurors, the call on the ground – the default position of the law – is that Murdaugh is innocent. It is the job of the prosecution, he said, to prove Murdaugh’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
If the government has not met its “overwhelming burden” of proof, he said, the jury should not find Murdaugh guilty.
A juror is removed shortly before the deliberations begin.
As Thursday’s court session began, Judge Clifton Newman announced that a juror on the panel was being replaced. The court received a complaint from a member of the public stating that the juror, a woman identified only as juror number 785, had “inappropriately interacted” with people not involved in the case.
Newman thanked the woman for her attentive and positive attitude and investment of her time throughout the matter. But, he said, it will be changed so that the integrity of the trial is maintained.
A lighter moment erupted shortly before the juror left, as she said she needed her purse from another room—along with a dozen eggs that another juror had brought for everyone on the panel.
“a dozen eggs?” Newman asked.
“Do you want to leave the eggs or take the eggs?” the judge asked. The juror confirmed that she wanted to have the eggs.
Newman also instructed her not to talk about the case until after the trial was over.
Prosecutor said witnesses were murdered
Prosecutors have built a case against the murders using circumstantial evidence, a lack of eyewitnesses, video records or the murder weapon.
Prosecutor Creighton Waters told the jury on Wednesday, “We couldn’t bring you any eyewitnesses because they were murdered.”
The trial concludes a week after Murdaugh himself took the stand to admit that he had repeatedly lied to investigators when he said he had lived in Moselle with his wife and son shortly before he died. The dog was not in the kennel.
In his new version of events, Murdaugh admitted being there but said he went back home before 9 p.m. When prosecutors say murders happened.
Prosecutor tells jurors: Don’t let Murdaugh fool you
In his closing argument, Waters stressed to the jurors that he felt there was one thing missing from the two days Murdaugh had spent testifying. If the new alibi is true, Waters asked, why did Murdaugh express no regret that he did not stay in the kennel for the possible safety of his wife and child?
Jurors learned a tremendous amount of information about Murdaugh’s character from his former law partners and clients, who said he stole millions of dollars, and many stories about his alibi.
“This defendant has fooled everyone – everyone who thought they were close to him,” Waters said. “He fooled Maggie and Paul, too, and they paid the price with their lives. Don’t let him fool you, too.”