South Carolina’s top court on Wednesday undid the murder convictions against Alex Murdaugh, the lawyer a jury had found guilty of murdering his wife and one of his sons in a trial that captivated the country.
In a unanimous opinion, the State Supreme Court said that “shocking jury interference” by a court clerk who oversaw jurors during the 2023 trial meant that Mr. Murdaugh’s convictions must be overturned.
Mr. Murdaugh, 57, will remain in prison because he also had pleaded guilty to various charges related to stealing millions of dollars from his law firm and his former clients. While he has admitted to embezzlement, he has long maintained — including during testimony at his trial — that he did not kill his wife, Maggie, 52, and his younger son, Paul, 22.
The case was prosecuted by the South Carolina attorney general’s office, which is expected to retry Mr. Murdaugh.
The two victims were found shot to death in June 2021 on the family’s hunting estate, in a rural part of South Carolina’s Lowcountry. The case went unsolved for more than a year before Mr. Murdaugh was arrested.
The case drew enormous attention in part because of the family’s storied history in the region. The Murdaugh family ran a prosecutor’s office and a prominent law firm there for decades, and Paul Murdaugh at the time of his death had been facing charges of drunkenly crashing a boat, killing a teenage passenger.
The nearly six-week trial ended with his conviction in March 2023. Jurors deliberated for less than three hours before determining that he had killed his wife and son. Prosecutors had described the murders as a desperate bid by Mr. Murdaugh to gain sympathy as his lies about drug use and theft were on the verge of being exposed.
But soon after his conviction, his legal team began to argue that the conduct of the Colleton County clerk of court, Becky Hill, who was in charge of logistics and other tasks relating to the jurors, had tainted the trial.
In testimony, some of the jurors said that Ms. Hill had made comments about Mr. Murdaugh’s testimony at trial, including that they should not be “fooled” by him and to watch his body language.
Ms. Hill, who had read the guilty verdicts when Mr. Murdaugh was convicted, later resigned from her job. In December, she was sentenced to probation after pleading guilty to misusing public funds and using her government job for personal gain by promoting her book about the trial.
In Wednesday’s ruling, the state’s five supreme court justices said that Ms. Hill had “placed her fingers on the scales of justice,” denying Mr. Murdaugh the right to a fair trial.
Mr. Murdaugh’s lawyers had also argued that the trial judge, Clifton Newman, erred in allowing testimony about Mr. Murdaugh’s financial crimes in the murder trial.
While the State Supreme Court focused on Ms. Hill’s behavior in its ruling, the justices also wrote that Judge Newman “should have limited” the evidence that jurors heard about Mr. Murdaugh’s financial crimes.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
