A South Carolina jury found once successful — but disbarred — trial attorney Alex Murdaugh guilty of killing his wife and son Thursday after roughly three hours of deliberation.
The 12 jurors’ verdict came rather quickly for such a high-profile case, leading some court watchers to speculate that there would be a mistrial in the double murder trial. His wife Maggie, 54, and son Paul, 22, were killed at the family’s rural Colleton County property June 7, 2021.
The trial, which began Jan. 25 and lasted about six weeks, drew national attention since Murdaugh was from a legendary South Carolina family of attorneys, who had served as local district attorneys since the 1920s.
Judge Clifton Newman scheduled the sentencing hearing for Friday morning. Murdaugh faces a minimum sentence of 30 years in prison, with life without parole a possibility.
The defense team, consisting of attorneys Richard Harpootlian and Jim Griffin, moved for a mistrial and requested the verdict be tossed but the judge denied their request.
“The jury has now considered the evidence for a significant period of time, and the evidence of guilt is overwhelming,” the judge said.
Nearly 80 witnesses testified, with Murdaugh taking the stand in his own defense.
He told the jurors that he was an opioid addict and committed financial crimes but insisted he did not kill his wife and son.
“I did not kill Maggie, and I did not kill Paul. I would never hurt Maggie, and I would never hurt Paul — ever — under any circumstances,” he told jurors.
Murdaugh did not show any emotion — just blinked several times — when the guilty verdict was read.
Prosecutor Creighton Waters, speaking to the public outside the court after the verdict, proclaimed that “justice was done today.”
“It doesn’t matter who your family is. It doesn’t matter how much money you have or people think you have. It doesn’t matter what you think, how prominent you are. If you do wrong, if you break the law, if you murder — then justice will be done in South Carolina,” he said.
Judge Newman thanked the jurors for their service.
“I want to thank each one of you individually,” the judge said. “It’s not often you are called upon to sit in judgement of your fellow man, but you all responded and you gave due consideration to the evidence.”
Roughly 30 people were in the courtroom when the verdict was read. The audience remained silent.
Murdaugh’s older son, Buster, was seated about four rows behind him and had his head in his hand.
The attorney’s fall from grace began in 2019 after he tried to shield his Paul from legal trouble after a boating accident that resulted in the death of 19-year-old Mallory Beach, a friend of Paul’s.
The state told the jury that Murdaugh sought sympathy for the death of his family members ahead of news coming out that he had committed a number of financial crimes, suggesting sympathy was the motive for the slayings.
The two victims were shot by different guns — which were never entered into evidence by the prosecution — at the family dog kennels on the property.
Murdaugh insisted that the different weapons suggested there were two shooters, and he didn’t do it. He said people who were upset with Paul over the boating accident likely committed the murders.
The lawyer had told law enforcement that he was napping while his wife and son were at the kennels before heading out to check on his mother, who had dementia, only later returning to the property to find the two dead.
But a cell phone video recorded by Paul minutes before his death was played during the trial, with the jurors hearing three voices — including Murdaugh’s, revealing that he was in fact at the kennels and had lied to law enforcement for months about his whereabouts.
Murdaugh has been accused of stealing millions from clients, partners and committing alleged tax crimes over the course of a decade. He was removed from his law firm and eventually disbarred.
His fall from grace was detailed in a Netflix documentary, which also highlighted the death of the family housekeeper after she tripped and fell at the family’s home. Murdaugh filed insurance claims following the death, but never handed the funds over to her family.
He admitted to several financial crimes on the stand, meaning that even if he had been acquitted of the family killings, he still faced decades in prison.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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