COLUMBIA, S.C. — A lawyer for Alex Murdaugh, who stands accused of murdering his wife and son in June 2021, has alleged in new court filings that the South Carolina attorney general’s office has withheld discovery all while leaking details to news media.
“The State immediately decided Alex was the prime suspect, before anyone collected, investigated, or reviewed any evidence,” the motion says. “For over a year the Attorney General has used a State Grand Jury investigation of alleged white-collar crimes involving Murdaugh as a device to find evidence justifying the State’s blind guess that Alex murdered his wife and son.”
The multipage motion, filed Tuesday in Colleton County where Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were killed, asks Judge Clifton Newman to compel the attorney general to turn over evidence against their client.
The motion was the focus of a Wednesday news conference held by Murdaugh’s attorney, state Sen. Dick Harpootlian, who called the withholding of evidence “unprecedented” and called the attorney general’s efforts “trial by ambush.”
“This conduct is unprecedented — unprecedented,” Harpootlian told reporters Wednesday outside his Columbia law office. “They are hiding the ball.”
South Carolina rules state that trial procedure requires prosecutors to turn over state’s evidence within 30 days after the material is requested, said Jack Swerling, a veteran Columbia defense attorney.
Swerling said the rules also give the trial judge the discretion to set another time frame for prosecutors to turn over evidence.
A landmark 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case, Brady v. Maryland, requires prosecutors turn over to defense lawyers all evidence that might be favorable to a defendant.
In this case, Murdaugh said evidence was owed to the defense by Monday.
“We have nothing, zero, nada,” Harpootlian told reporters Wednesday.
Attorney General spokesman Robert Kittle told The State Tuesday, “We are planning on following the rules and turning over everything we are supposed to.”
Sometimes, Kittle added, there may be matters “that we are waiting for” that affect the timetable of turning over evidence. Harpootlian said he is determined to try the case in January and expects to seat a jury in Colleton County, where the murders took place.
Murdaugh, a disbarred attorney, was indicted five weeks ago on July 14 for the June 2021 murders of his wife Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22, at their Colleton County hunting lodge estate of Moselle.
Indictments in the case accuse Murdaugh of killing Maggie with a rifle and Paul with a shotgun. The indictments gave no motive. The lack of detailed information underscores the puzzling unknowns that have been part of the case since the killings.
Murdaugh’s trial on murder charges is expected to be one of the most widely-watched trials in the state and nation in recent years.
Murdaugh also is charged in more than a dozen indictments with an array of financial theft crimes that allege he stole some $8.4 million from friends, associates, fellow lawyers and clients and laundered the stolen money through various bank accounts. He also is alleged to have used his stolen cash to set up a drug pipeline to buy drugs through intermediaries.
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(Senior editor Maayan Schechter contributed to this report.)
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