The South Carolina judge who presided over the trial of Alex Murdaugh earlier this year admitted he felt bad for the disgraced lawyer and convicted murderer.
Judge Clifton Newman sentenced Murdaugh to life in prison for killing his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, by brutally shooting the pair of the at the family home in June 2021.
In a trial that gripped the nation, Murdaugh was incriminated by multiple pieces of evidence including a video shot by Paul moments before his own murder that placed his father at the scene.
Murdaugh took the rare step of testifying in his own defence and found himself caught in a lie on the witness stand in a moment that many observers believe sealed his fate.
Speaking for the first time since the trial, Judge Newman told Craig Melvin of NBC’s Today show: “I felt sorry for him.”
“I felt that he was just in a position where he could not, where if there’s a hole that he could go into, he would dive in that hole and keep going to the lowest depths,” he continued.
Judge Newman said in retrospect he should not have been surprised by the attention the murder trial received given that it also included allegations of stealing millions of dollars from clients, drug addiction, and the high-profile nature of the family.
Murdaugh had originally claimed that he had come home to find his wife and son shot to death by the dog kennels at the rural South Carolina property.
Prosecutors unpicked almost every detail of his story from the 911 call onwards as Murdaugh’s web of lies and attempted coverup was laid out before the jury.
These ranged from an oddly-timed visit to his mother to his pristinely clean clothes, despite saying he had checked both bodies, all the way through to a botched alleged suicide attempt that he first claimed was an attempt on his life.
The jury returned a guilty verdict in less than three hours — something that did not surprise Judge Newman given the amount of time the jury had spent listening to the evidence.
Recalling the judge’s powerful sentencing statement, Melvin asked if he felt Murdaugh would be haunted by his wife and son.
“I think so. I cannot imagine him having a peaceful night, knowing what he did,” he said.
He further told Melvin that he believed that if Murdaugh “had an opportunity to do it over again, he’d never do it.”
Murdaugh faces approximately 100 more state charges as well as several federal charges, covering alleged money laundering, insurance fraud, and drug trafficking.
He maintains that he did not kill Maggie and Paul.
