The South Carolina Supreme Court has overturned the murder convictions of Alex Murdaugh and ordered a new trial for the disbarred lawyer in the killing of his wife and son, citing “improper external influences on the jury.”
The high court’s five justices voted unanimously Wednesday to order a new trial, ruling that the 2023 trial was influenced by Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca Hill’s comments to jurors.
“Hill placed her fingers on the scales of justice, thereby denying Murdaugh his right to a fair trial by an impartial jury,” the justices wrote in their decision.
In their request for a retrial, Murdaugh’s attorneys claimed Hill had tampered with the jury by telling them not to be “fooled” by the defense testimony and to “watch out” for Murdaugh’s body language. Hill resigned in 2024 and pleaded guilty in December to charges of obstruction of justice and perjury for showing a photographer sealed court exhibits and later lying about it.
“Although we are aware of the time, money, and effort expended for this lengthy trial, we have no choice but to reverse the denial of Murdaugh’s motion for a new trial due to Hill’s improper external influences on the jury and remand for a new trial,” the justices wrote Wednesday.
Despite the overturned murder convictions, Murdaugh, 57, will remain in prison: He is serving a separate 40-year sentence for nearly two dozen federal financial crimes, including bank fraud, wire fraud and money laundering.
Murdaugh was one in a long family line of prominent South Carolina lawyers: For nearly a century, someone in the powerful Murdaugh clan served as the circuit solicitor in the Lowcountry region, leading some to refer to it as “Murdaugh Country.” In 2023, Murdaugh was convicted of murdering his wife, Maggie, and younger son Paul at their family’s home. The killings and the six-week trial captivated the public and were the subject of multiple television series and a Netflix documentary.
Murdaugh’s surviving son, Buster, sued Netflix and other media companies for defamation in 2024 over documentaries that he said wrongly linked him to the 2015 killing of Stephen Smith, a nursing student who was found dead by a Lowcountry road. In February, the media companies and Buster Murdaugh reached a settlement for an amount that was not publicly disclosed.
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