Murdaugh jurors differ on clerk’s conduct
COLUMBIA, S.C. — One member of the jury that convicted Alex Murdaugh of murdering his wife and son testified Monday that when a court clerk urged jurors to watch his actions and body language during the trial, it made him seem guilty — and those comments influenced her decision to convict.
But the 11 other jurors said they based their guilty verdicts only on the testimony, evidence and law presented at trial, and just one of them mentioned hearing anything similar about Murdaugh from Colleton County Clerk Becky Hill.
All 12 jurors made the 90-mile trip from Colleton County to Columbia to give what was typically about three minutes of testimony, mostly yes-or-no questions from the judge’s script. Murdaugh, now a convicted killer, disbarred attorney and admitted thief serving a life sentence, wore an orange prison jumpsuit as he watched with his lawyers.
Hill also testified, denying that she ever spoke about the case or Murdaugh at all with jurors.
“I never talked to any jurors about anything like that,” Hill said.
But Judge Jean Toal questioned her truthfulness after Hill said she used “literary license” for some things she wrote about in her book on the trial, including whether she feared as she read the verdict that the jury might end up finding him innocent.
“I did have a certain way I felt,” Hill said.
Murdaugh’s defense later called Barnwell County Clerk Rhonda McElveen, who helped Hill during the trial. McElveen said Hill suggested before the trial that they should write a book on the case together “because she wanted a lake house and I wanted to retire” and that a guilty verdict would sell more books.
But under cross-examination, McElveen said she didn’t reach out to the trial judge because she didn’t think any of Hill’s comments or behaviors rose to the level of misconduct.
Hill was also questioned about why she was telling people hours before the jury received the case that she expected deliberations to be short. The clerk said it was a gut feeling after years in a courtroom.
The unusual hearing was prompted in part by a sworn statement from the first juror called to the stand Monday.
She affirmed what she said last August, repeating Monday that Hill told jurors to note Murdaugh’s actions and “watch him closely” when he testified in his own defense.
“She made it seem like he was already guilty,” said the woman, identified only as Juror Z. Asked whether this influenced her vote to find him guilty, she said “Yes ma’am.”
In later questioning, the juror said she also stands by another statement she made in the August affidavit: that it was her fellow jurors, more than the clerk’s statements, that influenced her to vote guilty.
“I had questions about Mr. Murdaugh’s guilt but voted guilty because I felt pressured by other jurors,” she said.
The rest of the jury filed in one by one and said their verdicts weren’t influenced by anything outside the trial. One said he heard Hill say “watch his body language” before Murdaugh testified, but said her comment didn’t change his mind.
“What matters is what the jurors heard” and whether that persuaded them to change their verdicts to guilty in a way that was anything other than the product of honest deliberation, prosecutor Creighton Walters said in closing. “You have 11 of them strong as a rock who said this verdict was not influenced,” Walters said. “The evidence is overwhelming from the people who mattered.”
In his closing, defense attorney Jim Griffin cited case law in arguing that any communication about a case from court staff to jurors is presumptively prejudicial. He said the defense clearly proved Hill made prejudicial comments to the jury, and “one of those jurors says it influenced [her] verdict. How is that not prejudice?”
Murdaugh’s fall from his role as an attorney lording over his small county to a sentence of life without parole has been exhaustively covered by true crime shows, podcasts and bloggers.
Jury tampering is the basis for Murdaugh’s appeal, but Toal set a difficult standard for his lawyers. She ruled that the defense must prove that potential misconduct by Hill directly led jurors to change their minds to guilty.
The defense argued that if they prove the jury was tampered with, it shouldn’t matter whether a juror openly said their verdict changed, because even subtle influence could have kept Murdaugh from getting a fair trial.