Alex Murdaugh may be the only person involved in this exhausting saga in South Carolina who would vote for a redo of his murder trial. But judging by the state Supreme Court’s questioning during a hearing Wednesday, he might get the new trial he’s seeking.
Murdaugh was convicted in 2023 for the murders of his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, and his younger son, Paul, at the family’s estate. Judge Clifton Newman handed him two life sentences. During a six-week trial, prosecutors argued that Murdaugh shot his wife and son out of desperation as his world was unraveling. Prosecutor Creighton Waters referred to events that would ruin Murdaugh and the family legacy he valued above all else.
These included a boating accident that killed a local girl and was blamed on Paul, who was driving the boat. Lawsuits piled up. Murdaugh’s financial crimes, bilking personal injury clients of millions of dollars in insurance money, were coming to a head, along with revelations that the opioid-addicted Murdaugh was stealing money from his law firm. The state argued that these pressures drove him to kill, to shift attention from his sins and earn sympathy as the devastated husband and father.
It’s a theory. Apparently, it worked.
The detailed evidence was overwhelming. The high court must decide if the state’s case was strong enough to override serious questions about possible jury tampering by the clerk of court and potentially prejudicial evidence the state presented with the permission of a respected but prosecution-friendly judge.
Murdaugh’s lawyers filed two appeals that were considered together at the hearing. One, filed immediately after the trial, challenges the prosecution’s presentation of evidence related to financial crimes ascribed to Murdaugh, specifically the inclusion of emotionally packed victims’ statements that defense lawyers say were prejudicial. One justice noted that Newman had a duty as gatekeeper but “the gate here was just left open.”
The other appeal concerns the shocking behavior of the Colleton County clerk of court, Mary Rebecca “Becky” Hill, who, according to at least two jurors, tried to influence the verdict with her anti-Murdaugh commentary. She was also responsible for getting Juror 785, known as the “egg lady” (for bringing eggs to the jury room), booted from the proceedings for allegedly talking about the trial out of court against the judge’s orders. This occurred minutes before jury deliberations were to begin and is at least theoretically the reason for the guilty verdict. The egg lady was disinclined to convict.
A 2024 hearing before Justice Jean Toal examined whether comments Hill allegedly made to jurors and to another clerk justified a retrial. Only one juror, identified as Juror Z, the alternate who replaced the egg lady, said that she was influenced by comments Hill had made — to “watch [Murdaugh’s] body language” when he testified and to “not be fooled” by evidence presented by the defense attorneys.
In other testimony before Toal, Barnwell County Clerk of Court Rhonda McElveen said that Hill, who was planning to write a book about the trial, had told her she needed a guilty verdict for book sales so she could buy a lake house. This is not an unreasonable wish that someone might secretly harbor — or jokingly tell a friend in confidence.
After her focused questioning of jurors, Toal delivered a written ruling in about 15 minutes against a retrial. The judge did not cite Juror Z’s comments. Murdaugh’s lawyers are also appealing this decision.
Few if any people think Murdaugh deserves a second chance because he’s innocent or because he’s such a swell guy. He’s an awful human being who has admitted to stealing his clients’ money. The only reason, as the defense is claiming, is that Murdaugh was denied his Sixth Amendment fair trial protections because of Hill’s actions and comments.
The egg lady’s importance to the appeal isn’t only that she was dismissed at the last minute but also that she wasn’t allowed to testify at the 2024 hearing. It was clear during Wednesday’s hearing that the justices had read her affidavit even though it wasn’t included in the defense’s brief and led to key questions. Justice George C. James asked Waters, “Can we consider that affidavit? What was the rationale for [Toal] not allowing the ‘egg juror’ to testify?”
Chief Justice John Kittredge asked, “What do we do about the order [from Toal] that doesn’t even mention that Juror Z did in fact testify about the comment ‘Don’t let the defense confuse you’?”
Kittredge added that when Hill’s comments are taken together, in context, they “take on a very nefarious message.”
Finally, Kittredge asked Waters: If Hill’s alleged statements to jurors were true, “Do you still have a path to victory?”
Waters answered yes, saying that though such remarks would have been “improper,” and even if one juror had been swayed, the overwhelming evidence outweighed everything else. When I asked Murdaugh’s attorney, Dick Harpootlian, to comment, he said, “There’s no ‘overwhelming evidence’ exemption in the Sixth Amendment.”
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