The judge overseeing the retrial of Alex Murdaugh, whose murder convictions for killing his wife and one of his sons were tossed out last month, has set a tentative trial date for next April.
Mr. Murdaugh, 58, a fourth-generation lawyer, is still serving a decades-long prison sentence for various financial crimes, and he arrived to court on Monday in an orange jumpsuit with his hands and legs shackled. He occasionally whispered with his lawyers and appeared to closely follow the proceedings at the courthouse in Lexington, S.C., near the state capital of Columbia.
The judge who was newly appointed to oversee his retrial, Debra McCaslin, offered a trial date of April 5, 2027, and said she hoped to stick to that date — or close to it — despite the many procedural issues that must be worked out before then. Among them are where the trial will be held and what kind of evidence jurors will be allowed to hear.
Mr. Murdaugh’s lawyers have asked Judge McCaslin to move the retrial out of a five-county area in the state’s Lowcountry region, where Mr. Murdaugh was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2023. That conviction was overturned last month by the state’s top court, citing “shocking jury interference” by a court clerk who had spoken to jurors about Mr. Murdaugh’s testimony and body language.
Mr. Murdaugh has admitted to stealing millions of dollars from his clients and former law firm but has long denied any involvement in the June 2021 murders of his wife, Maggie, 52, and their younger son, Paul, 22.
Judge McCaslin did not make any decision on Monday on the location of the retrial, nor did she rule on a request by Mr. Murdaugh’s lawyers to further test unknown D.N.A. found under the fingernails of Maggie Murdaugh. Mr. Murdaugh’s lawyers are also asking the judge to allow Mr. Murdaugh to have access to a laptop in prison, which they say would be used only for reviewing evidence for his retrial.
Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were fatally shot with different guns, neither of which has been recovered. The murders captivated the region and, before long, garnered national attention, in part because of the influence and controversy that had followed the Murdaugh family for more than a century. Mr. Murdaugh’s father, grandfather and great-grandfather each served as the chief prosecutor for a rural swath of the state.
At the time he was killed, Mr. Murdaugh’s son was awaiting trial on charges that he drunkenly crashed a boat, killing a 19-year-old passenger named Mallory Beach. The deaths of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh went unsolved for more than a year, during which the case took a bizarre turn. After being pushed out of his law firm over stealing millions of dollars, Mr. Murdaugh had asked one of his cousins to shoot him on the side of the road, though the bullet only grazed him. Mr. Murdaugh was eventually charged with killing his wife and son in July 2022.
At his first trial, one central piece of evidence against him was a video that Paul Murdaugh had taken at the family’s dog kennels on their property. That video captured Alex Murdaugh’s voice, proving that he was at the scene of the murders shortly before they took place, despite his having denied being there.
Judge McCaslin said on Monday that she expected to decide key matters about evidence before the trial begins. The state’s top court, in ordering a new trial, said that the judge who oversaw the first trial had allowed prosecutors “to go far too long and far too deep” into testimony about Mr. Murdaugh’s financial malfeasance.
Prosecutors had used that evidence to argue that Mr. Murdaugh had carried out the murders in an odd and unsuccessful effort to distract from his financial theft, but the top court said the testimony was likely prejudicial.
Judge McCaslin set the next pretrial hearing for Aug. 14.
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