Legal professionals for Alex Murdaugh are taking two paths to attraction his homicide convictions for killing his spouse and son, saying {that a} court docket clerk pushed a responsible verdict to jurors to promote books and that the trial decide allowed improper proof such because the disgraced South Carolina lawyer’s monetary crimes.
The 132-page attraction was filed this week earlier than the South Carolina supreme court docket. Prosecutors may have time to reply, and the justices need to learn all materials across the six-week 2023 trial, which means a listening to might be months away.
The attraction extensively particulars arguments which have already been made, both via objections in the course of the trial or a listening to this 12 months at which jurors have been questioned about feedback made by then Colleton county clerk Becky Hill in the course of the trial.
Murdaugh legal professionals wrote that his homicide convictions must be overturned as a result of the general public wants extra than simply “social-media-fed concepts in regards to the particulars of against the law they didn’t witness.
“Offering Murdaugh with the truthful trial that each citizen of South Carolina would anticipate for himself is critical to guarantee all that nobody – highly effective or humble, harmless or responsible, hated or beloved – is proscribed from due course of and the equal safety of the legislation,” mentioned the attraction signed by each of Murdaugh’s chief legal professionals at his trial, Jim Griffin and Dick Harpootlian.
Murdaugh, 56, is serving life in jail for the shootings of his spouse, Maggie, and youthful son, Paul, exterior their dwelling in 2021. He continues to adamantly deny killing them, together with from the stand at his trial.
Murdaugh and his household dominated the authorized system and life in close by Hampton county for generations, and prosecutors throughout his trial laid out how he used his energy and status to get away with stealing from shoppers and his legislation agency and out of different jams all his life.
Of their attraction, the protection identified how little bodily proof related Murdaugh to the crime. Investigators by no means discovered the rifle used to kill his spouse and a shotgun whose blast despatched blood and tissue throughout the small room the place his son was discovered lifeless.
Solely tiny quantities of blood have been discovered on the garments Murdaugh was sporting when he discovered the our bodies, and no bloody garments have been discovered elsewhere.
Murdaugh’s protection mentioned a state investigator shouldn’t have been allowed to testify that markings on cartridges discovered at a capturing vary on the household property matched these discovered on the killings, as a result of he by no means proved the markings have been distinctive to 1 gun.
They mentioned a blue raincoat with a tiny quantity of gunshot residue shouldn’t have been put into proof as a result of a witness testified about seeing Murdaugh with a blue tarp, not a raincoat.
The protection legal professionals additionally mentioned the decide shouldn’t have allowed proof from an investigator who mentioned he spent a weekend tossing an iPhone round his workplace to find out whether or not the display screen, which comes on with a lightweight contact, may not come on with a extra violent movement. The skilled witness stored no information and didn’t document his experiments.
Prosecutors recommended Murdaugh threw his spouse’s telephone from his transferring automobile as he drove away, however information from his SUV’s laptop confirmed the telephone display screen turned on two minutes earlier than Murdaugh’s automobile handed the spot the place the telephone was discovered.
About half of the attraction offers with Hill, the court docket clerk. In January, Choose Jean Toal dominated that whereas she couldn’t consider Hill’s testimony that she didn’t discuss to jurors in regards to the case in the course of the trial, she additionally couldn’t overturn the decision based mostly “on the power of some fleeting and silly feedback by a publicity-seeking clerk of court docket” as a result of they didn’t actively change the jurors’ minds.
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At the least three jurors mentioned Hill instructed them to look at Murdaugh’s testimony in his personal protection fastidiously, and one mentioned the suggestion appeared to point he was responsible and couldn’t be trusted.
A clerk of court docket from a neighboring county testified that Hill instructed her she was going to jot down a e book about Murdaugh’s trial and {that a} responsible verdict would in all probability promote extra copies.
The remainder of the attraction handled trial issues, together with the choice by the decide to permit six days of proof about Murdaugh stealing from shoppers and his legislation agency after prosecutors efficiently argued a potential motive for the killings was Murdaugh in search of sympathy to cease additional investigations into lacking cash.
The trial decide, Clifton Newman, mentioned that the jury was entitled to contemplate whether or not Murdaugh’s “obvious desperation” and “dire monetary scenario” resulted within the killings of his household and that he didn’t suppose the monetary crime proof alone would persuade the jury to convict Murdaugh of homicide.
Protection attorneys strenuously objected on the time and within the attraction. Within the court docket data filed this week, they cited instances by which appeals courts overturned homicide convictions as a result of proof of infidelity or spousal abuse have been allowed in trials however prosecutors couldn’t immediately hyperlink them to the killings.
“Right here, the state was improperly permitted to introduce proof of Murdaugh’s alleged monetary crimes solely to impugn his character to bolster its in any other case weak case,” his legal professionals wrote.
Even when Murdaugh will get a brand new homicide trial, he gained’t stroll out free. He has been sentenced to 40 years for pleading responsible to stealing hundreds of thousands from his legislation agency and from settlements he gained for shoppers on wrongful-death and serious-injury lawsuits. Murdaugh promised to not attraction that sentence as a part of plea offers.
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