A South Carolina judge on Monday denied Alex Murdaugh’s bid for a new trial after his defense team accused a court clerk of tampering with a jury.
Judge Jean Toal said she was not sure if Becky Hill, the Colleton county clerk, was telling the truth that she never spoke to jurors about the case, saying she was “attracted by the siren call of celebrity”.
But Toal said the 12 jurors who testified all said any comments did not directly influence their decision to find Murdaugh guilty.
Toal said after reviewing the full transcript of the six-week trial, she could not overturn the verdict based “on the strength of some fleeting and foolish comments by a publicity-seeking clerk of court” because they didn’t actively change the jurors’ minds.
The Murdaugh killings in 2021 have gripped much of the US – and beyond – with their southern Gothic story of violence, corruption and twisted family dynamics playing out in a small South Carolina town. They have become the subject of fevered media attention, true crime podcasts and numerous television documentaries.
But the story has not ended with Murdaugh’s conviction. Murdaugh, the scion of a powerful local family, has insisted he did not kill his younger son Paul with a shotgun and his wife Maggie with a rifle at their home near Hampton, about 70 miles west of Charleston, 2021.
Monday’s hearing was centered on whether the jury that found him guilty of the murders was improperly influenced by the county clerk. In court, one juror testified that when a court clerk urged jurors to watch Murdaugh’s conduct 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 Hill.
Murdaugh wore an orange prison jumpsuit as he watched with his lawyers.
Hill also testified, denying 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 not guilty.
“I did have a certain way I felt,” Hill said.
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 on Monday. She affirmed what she said last August, repeating on 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 stood 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.
Jury tampering is the basis for Murdaugh’s appeal, but Toal set a difficult standard for his lawyers. She ruled the defense must prove that potential misconduct by Hill directly led jurors to change their minds to guilty.
The defense argued if they prove the jury was tampered with, it should not matter whether a juror openly said their verdict changed, because even subtle influence could have kept Murdaugh from getting a fair trial.
Even if Murdaugh, 55, receives a new murder trial he will not walk out free. He is also serving 27 years after admitting he stole $12m from his law firm and from settlements he gained for clients on wrongful death and serious injury lawsuits. Murdaugh promised not to appeal that sentence as part of his plea deal.
But if this effort fails, Murdaugh has not even started the regular appeals of his sentence, in which his lawyers are expected to argue a number of reasons why his murder trial was unfair, including the judge allowing voluminous testimony of his financial crimes. They said this enabled prosecutors to smear Murdaugh with evidence not directly linked to the killings.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
