South Carolina attorney Alex Murdaugh will be back in a courtroom Friday, this time facing the judge as a convicted murderer looking at 30 years to life in prison for killing his wife and son.
Prosecutors indicated in earlier court filings that they will ask for a life sentence to finally hold Murdaugh responsible for what they say are decades of lying, stealing and using his family's considerable clout in their tiny county to his advantage. Any sentence would have no chance of parole.
As Alex Murdaugh stands before a judge to learn his fate, he’ll be in same courtroom on the circuit his father, grandfather and great-grandfather tried cases as the elected prosecutor for more than 80 years. His grandfather’s portrait hung in the back of the room until the judge ordered it taken down for the trial.
Instead of the dress shirt and sport coat he wore through the six-week trial, the attorney who made millions suing big companies on behalf of people injured in wrecks arrived at court in a jail jumpsuit the day after he was convicted of two counts of murder.
The Colleton County jury deliberated for less than three hours before finding Murdaugh guilty of killing his 22-year-old son Paul with a shotgun and his 52-year-old wife Maggie with a rifle on June 7, 2021.
Juror Craig Moyer told ABC News that when deliberations began, the jury immediately took a poll and there were nine guilty votes. It didn't take long to convince the other three.
The juror agreed with prosecutors that the key piece of evidence was a video locked on his son’s cellphone for a year — video shot minutes before the killings at the same kennels near where the bodies would be found.
The voices of all three Murdaughs can be heard on the video, though Alex Murdaugh had insisted for 20 months that he hadn't been at the kennels that night. When he took the stand in his own defense, the first thing he did was admit he had lied to investigators about being at the kennels, saying he was paranoid of law enforcement because he was an opioid addict with pills in his pocket the night of the killings.
“A good liar. But not good enough,” Moyer said.
Prosecutors didn’t have the weapons used to kill the Murdaughs or other direct evidence like confessions or blood spatter. But they had a mountain of circumstantial evidence, including the video putting Murdaugh at the scene of the killings five minutes before his wife and son stopped using their cellphones forever.
It's unclear who will speak at Friday's sentencing hearing. Murdaugh's surviving son, Buster, and one of his brothers testified for the defense and have been behind him every day of the trial.
Murdaugh's sister-in-law testified they were all close. Alex Murdaugh went on vacation with them in the months after the killings.
Through more than 75 witnesses and nearly 800 pieces of evidence, jurors heard about betrayed friends and clients, Murdaugh’s failed attempt to stage his own death in an insurance fraud scheme, a fatal boat crash in which his son was implicated, the housekeeper who died in a fall in the Murdaugh home and the grisly scene of the killings.
The now-disbarred attorney admitted stealing millions of dollars from the family firm and clients, saying he needed the money to fund his drug habit. Before he was charged with murder, Murdaugh was in jail awaiting trial on about 100 other charges ranging from insurance fraud to tax evasion.
The Murdaughs dominated the legal scene in neighboring Hampton County for a century. Another brother remains in the large law firm the family founded a century ago.
When he took the stand last week, Murdaugh appeared to cry as he denied again and again that he killed his wife. But juror Moyer said he saw through yet another lie.
“He never cried. All he did was blow snot," Moyer said. "No tears. I saw his eyes. I was this close to him.”
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Find more AP coverage of the case: https://apnews.com/hub/alex-murdaugh
___ Collins reported from Columbia, South Carolina.
