Alex Murdaugh’s lawyers say jury was influenced, ask for new trial
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Attorneys for convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh want a new trial, accusing the court clerk of improperly influencing the jury and betraying her oath of office for money and fame.
They’ve accused the court clerk at his double murder trial of telling jurors not to trust him when he testified in his own defense, having private conversations with the jury foreperson and pressuring jurors to come to a quick verdict.
The request filed by Murdaugh’s lawyers on Tuesday also accuses Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca Hill of giving jury members business cards from reporters during the trial. After the verdict, she traveled to New York City with three of the jurors to do interviews. She also wrote a book after the trial called “Behind the Doors of Justice: The Murdaugh Murders.”
Trial court clerks “aren’t someone who should even talk to them about the case. I’ve never heard of that,” said Murdaugh attorney Dick Harpootlian, a state senator and lawyer for 50 years.
Hill did not respond on Tuesday to requests from The Associated Press for comment on the filing. Prosecutors said they were reviewing the motion and would respond through the courts.
Murdaugh wants the appellate judges to order an evidentiary hearing, and once they have more information on the record, to grant him a new trial. The 55-year-old disbarred attorney is serving life without parole after being convicted in the shooting deaths of his wife and son.
Murdaugh attorney Jim Griffin said everyone involved in the case refused to talk until Hill’s self-published book came out. Only then did a few reluctant jurors answer the door as Harpootlian’s team made another round of in-person visits on weekends.
The hearing would enable defense attorneys to force the other jurors, witnesses and potentially even the trial judge to testify under oath. The defense could also get phone records, emails and texts.
Right now “we have nothing but Dick’s Mercedes and dirt roads in Colleton County,” Griffin said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon outside the state Court of Appeals.
The defense has talked to four jurors and included sworn statements from two of them. A lawyer for those jurors, Joe Mccullough, was at the news conference and said they came forward reluctantly and didn’t want to talk about their motivation or what they thought about Murdaugh.
The request for the new trial centers around Hill, the clerk of court elected in 2020.
Hill had private conversations with the jury foreperson, both inside the courthouse and when jurors visited the crime scene at the Murdaugh’s property, according to sworn statements from three jurors included in Murdaugh’s appeal. The filing didn’t include any statement from the foreperson.
The jurors told Murdaugh’s lawyers that Hill told them “not to be fooled” by the evidence presented by the defense, and to watch Murdaugh closely as he testified and to “look at his actions,” and “look at his movements.”