After only three hours of deliberation, a jury in South Carolina found disgraced former attorney Alex Murdaugh guilty on all counts. Murdaugh was accused of killing his wife and son in 2021.
Murdaugh was convicted on four counts: Maggie Murdaugh’s murder, Paul Murdaugh’s murder, and two counts of possessing a weapon during a crime.
Murdaugh, 54, faces life in prison without the possibility of parole for each murder charge. The sentencing is scheduled for Friday. Murdaugh will stand trial again in the future for a variety of financial crimes.
South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said at a news conference Thursday evening that the verdict came after “nearly two years of blood, sweat, and tears from a lot of hardworking people.”
“Tonight, our criminal justice system functioned properly. It gave Maggie and Paul Murdaugh a voice after they were brutally murdered by someone they knew and trusted “Wilson stated.
The defense moved to have the verdict overturned and a mistrial declared after the verdict was read, but Judge Clifton Newman denied the request, citing the massive amount of evidence and testimony the jury had considered, according to The Associated Press.
“The jury has now considered the evidence for a significant period of time, and the evidence of guilt is overwhelming,” he said.
Murdaugh took the stand in his own defense and repeatedly broke down in tears over two days of testimony, as he flatly denied that he killed his wife and son.
He admitted under questioning that he had lied to investigators when he denied being at the estate that night — blaming his lies on his addiction to opioids. His attorneys said his drug habits cost $50,000 a week.
“I’m not quite sure how I let myself get where I got. I battled that addiction for so many years. I was spending so much money on pills,” Murdaugh said.
His presence at the murder scene was revealed by a cellphone video taken by his son, in which Alex Murdaugh’s voice could be heard shortly before the killings on June 7, 2021, near the kennels on their rural Colleton County estate.
Prosecutors claimed Alex Murdaugh murdered his wife and son in an attempt to divert attention away from his financial crimes and gain sympathy from the community. Maggie Murdaugh, 52, was shot with a rifle four or five times, and Paul, 22, was shot twice with a shotgun. The murder weapons were never discovered.
More than 75 witnesses testified, and the jury saw nearly 800 pieces of evidence. The jury heard about Murdaugh’s failed attempt to stage his own death for insurance money, as well as a fatal boat crash for which his son Paul was facing charges. They also heard about the death of the family’s housekeeper in a fall in the Murdaugh home, and accusations that Alex Murdaugh defrauded her family of the insurance settlement.
The defence, for its part, argued that because the authorities were so determined to catch him, they conducted a shoddy investigation, failing to collect evidence such as fingerprints or possible DNA on Maggie or Paul Murdaugh’s clothing that could have pointed to someone else.
The Murdaugh family is an American legal family in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina. From 1920 to 2006, three members of the family consecutively served as district attorneys, in charge of prosecuting all criminal cases in the state’s 14th circuit district, leading locals to call the five-county district “Murdaugh Country”. The family also founded a nationally recognized civil litigation law firm in Hampton, South Carolina, which specializes in personal injury litigation.
