S.C. ATTORNEY GIVEN TWO LIFE SENTENCES
A judge sentenced Alex Murdaugh to life in prison Friday for the murders of his wife and son, condemning the once-wealthy and influential Southern lawyer to spend the remainder of his life behind bars, a powerful rebuke from the rural South Carolina legal system that his family dominated for more than a century.
Judge Clifton Newman handed down two life sentences after berating Murdaugh for nearly 20 minutes, urging the lawyer he had previously encountered in courtrooms to come clean about the shocking crime and the lies he said Murdaugh
had told to cover it up.
His shifting stories, the judge said, “necessitated more lies,” a pattern that kept repeating itself. “Where will it end? It’s already ended for many who have heard you and concluded that it’ll never end,” he said. “But within your own soul, you have to deal with that.”
Murdaugh, 54, maintained his innocence as he stood in handcuffs and a tan jail jumpsuit in place of the blazers and dress shirts he had worn during the sixweek trial.
“I would never hurt my wife, Maggie, and I would never hurt my son, Paul-Paul,” he said, using a nickname for his slain son. The sentence came a day after jurors decided that Murdaugh had fatally shot his wife, Maggie Murdaugh, 52, and their younger son, Paul Murdaugh, 22, at the dog kennels on the family’s rural estate in June 2021.
Newman homed in on the Murdaugh family’s extensive influence in the state’s legal world. Murdaugh’s father, grandfather and greatgrandfather had all served in a top regional prosecutor role.
He suggested that Murdaugh may have been lucky that prosecutors in his case had asked for a sentence of life in prison, rather than the death penalty, for which the case would have qualified under South Carolina law.
“Over the past century, your family — including you — have been prosecuting people here in this courtroom, and many have received the death penalty, probably for lesser conduct,” he said.
Throughout the nationally televised trial, prosecutors had sought to paint Murdaugh as a man who viewed himself as above the law, driving around with blue lights installed in his car and leaving a badge from the prosecutor’s office — where he volunteered on a handful of cases over two decades — on the dashboard. He viewed himself as so untouchable, they argued, that he thought he could get away with killing his wife and son, murders that prosecutors said were committed in order to distract from investigations into his theft of millions of dollars from clients and his law firm.