Murderer Murdaugh gets life
S.C. ex-prosecutor was quickly convicted of killing wife, son
Double-murderer Alex Murdaugh will spend the rest of his life in prison.
The 54-year-old former lawyer proclaimed his innocence for a final time on Friday before he was handed two life sentences in the same South Carolina courtroom where jurors delivered a guilty verdict around 7 p.m. Thursday.
It’s the same circuit where Murdaugh once served as prosecutor, a position occupied for more than 80 years by an uninterrupted line of Murdaugh men.
“As I tell you again, I respect this court. But I am innocent. I would never under any circumstances hurt my wife, Maggie, and I would never under any circumstances hurt my son, Paul-Paul,” Murdaugh told Judge Clifton Newman, who was unmoved by the declaration.
“And it might not have been you. It might have been the monster that you become when you take 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 opioid pills,” Newman replied, referencing Murdaugh’s decades-long struggle with an addiction to painkillers.
“Maybe you become another person. I have seen that before,” Newman continued. “The person standing before me was not the person who committed the crime, though it is the same individual.”
Murdaugh’s 52-year-old wife, Maggie Murdaugh, and his 22-year-old son, Paul Murdaugh, were found dead on the family’s “Moselle” estate on June 7, 2021. A jury heard Murdaugh’s defense team suggest that more than one killer may have been responsible for the murders, which involved multiple gunshots fired from two weapons.
Jurors were not swayed by the defense’s argument. They deliberated for less than three hours before reaching a decision after six weeks of testimony. More than 70 witnesses took the stand — some of them delivering graphic testimony — during the trial, which Newman dubbed “one of the most troubling cases” he’s ever seen.
“You have a wife who has been killed, murdered. A son savagely murdered. A lawyer, a person from a respected family who has controlled justice in this community for over a century,” the judge told Murdaugh. “A person whose grandfather’s portrait hangs at the back of the courthouse that I had to have ordered removed
in order to ensure a fair trial.”
Newman noted that the conviction warranted the death penalty but said he would not question the state’s decision against pursuing it.
The defendant spent two days on the stand. During his testimony, Murdaugh claimed he found his youngest son’s “brain lying on the sidewalk” the night the murders occurred. He also admitted he visited the dog-kennel area of the family’s 1,772-acre property on the night of the murders. He had previously asserted he had not visited the kennels until late in the evening when he discovered Maggie and Paul’s bodies. A Snapchat video made by Paul proved that to be a lie.
Prosecutor Creighton Waters on Friday called on the judge to sentence Murdaugh to life behind bars, saying he shouldn’t “be among free, law-abiding citizens again.”
Over the course of the trial, he accused Murdaugh of callously lying to clients and business partners at the law firm his family started more than a century ago. The disbarred lawyer admitted to being a drug-addled swindler but insisted he was not capable of familicide. He said he sometimes took more than 2,000 milligrams of oxycodone a day in the months leading up to the slayings of his wife and son.
The 12-person jury that swiftly convicted Murdaugh did so despite the disqualification of one juror, who was sent home for prematurely speaking about the case. An alternate was subbed in before the defense began its closing arguments Thursday.
Newman was prepared to have jurors deliberate until 10 p.m. Thursday if necessary.