COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina Supreme Court has officially disbarred disgraced Hampton County attorney Alex Murdaugh, who remains jailed in Richland County on numerous financial fraud charges.
The order came down Tuesday, the same day it was reported that Murdaugh will face charges in the June 2021 shooting deaths of his wife and son.
“Based on his admitted reprehensible misconduct, we hereby disbar Respondent Richard Alexander Murdaugh from the practice of law in South Carolina,” the one-page order signed by all five court justices said.
“... Our decision today turns not on Respondent’s concession, but rather derives from our constitutional authority and duty to protect the public from attorneys who are not fit to practice law,” the justices added.
Disbarment is the most severe court sanction that an attorney can receive.
Since last November, Murdaugh has been charged in more than a dozen indictments with stealing some $8.4 million in money from clients, his law firm, his law partners and friends. The alleged thefts date back to 2011.
Murdaugh has formally admitted responsibility for one of those crimes: The theft of $4.3 million from the estate of his deceased housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, who died of injuries suffered in a 2018 fall at the main house in Murdaugh’s 1,772-acre estate in Colleton County.
The high court added in its disbarment order that Murdaugh has also “admitted in various court proceedings and filings that he engaged in financial misconduct involving theft of money from his former law firm (and) that he solicited his own murder to defraud his life insurance carrier.”
Those were the crimes that the Supreme Court’s five justices said they were disbarring Murdaugh.
Justices said their investigative arm, the Office of Disciplinary Counsel, is continuing to look into Murdaugh’s conduct.
“In removing (Murdaugh) from the legal profession, we note his misconduct remains under investigation by the ODC, and our decision today in no way concludes, limits, restricts, or otherwise impacts the ongoing ODC investigation, which we trust will continue without undue delay,” the order said.
“For purposes of transparency and accountability, if additional acts of misconduct by Respondent are discovered in the ODC investigation, we will issue supplemental order(s) detailing any such additional acts of misconduct and imposing additional sanctions where appropriate.”
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