Alex Murdaugh to appeal guilty verdict as defence continues to gripe about case after sentencing
Dick Harpootlian said Murdaugh had ‘no choice’ but to testify in his murder trial because he had been ‘made out to be a monster who stole from children, crippled people’
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Disgraced legal dynasty heir and convicted family killer Alex Murdaugh is already planning to appeal his verdict after a jury of 12 found him guilty of the murders of his wife and son.
Defence attorneys Jim Griffin and Dick Harpootlian held a feisty press conference outside Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina, on Friday where they vowed to fight the murder conviction which has landed Murdaugh behind bars for life.
Mr Harpootlian said that they will be filing appeal documents within 10 days and vowed that they would appeal his conviction all the way up to the US Supreme Court.
Despite the verdict, Mr Harpootlian insisted Murdaugh is innocent and said that they had no regrets about putting him on the witness stand in his own defence.
Murdaugh had “no choice” but to testify in his murder trial because he had been “made out to be a monster who stole from children, crippled people” and others, he said.
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“Did he pull it off? He apparently didn’t,” he said.
When asked if they believe Murdaugh is innocent, Mr Harpootlian quickly shot back: “Yes!”
Mr Griffin also insisted that Murdaugh’s family feels the same, saying that “after six weeks of trial, they came away more convinced that he did not do this”.
The defence team continued to gripe about several aspects of the state’s case – once again taking aim at SLED for its investigation into the murders and the report of blood spatter evidence tying Murdaugh to the murders which later turned out to be incorrect.
The decision by Judge Clifton Newman to let jurors hear evidence of Murdaugh’s slew of financial crimes is the strongest grounds for an appeal, said Mr Griffin.
Prosecutors said that Murdaugh killed his wife and son to distract from his string of financial crimes – at a time when his multi-million-dollar fraud scheme was on the brink of being exposed.
Jurors were told that on the day of the murders, Murdaugh was confronted by his law firm CFO about missing money that he had stolen.
Three days after the murders, a hearing was also slated to take place in a lawsuit over a fatal boat crash.
In February 2019, Paul had allegedly been drunk driving the family boat when it crashed, killing his 19-year-old friend Mallory Beach.
While Paul was facing felony charges over the crash, Murdaugh was being sued by the Beach family, and their attorney had filed a motion to compel to gain access to his finances.
Mr Griffin said this motive was “illogical and ludicrous” and that there “really was no evidnece linking” the financial crimes to the murders.
“We believe that was an erroneous decision” to allow that evidence in the trial, he said.
The panel of 12 jurors disagreed with the defence’s stance as they returned a unanimous verdict of guilty after less than three hours of deliberations.
On Friday, Judge Clifton Newman made it clear he felt the right decision had been reached as he handed down the harshest possible sentence of two consecutive terms of life without parole.
Addressing Murdaugh head on, the judge told him that his case was “one of the most troubling cases” he had ever handled – pointing out the fact the killer was a high-powered attorney from a prominent family in the lowcountry.
“We have a wife who has been killed, murdered, a son savagely murdered, a lawyer – person from a respected family who has control of justice in this community for over a century – a person whose grandfather’s portrait hanged at the back of the courthouse – that I had to have ordered removed in order to ensure that a fair trial was had,” he said.
“It’s also particularly troubling, Mr Murdaugh, because as a member of the legal community, you’ve practiced law before me, and we’ve seen each other at various occasions throughout the years.
“It was especially heartbreaking for me to see you go in the media from being a grieving father who lost their wife and son to being a person indicted and convicted of killing them.”
During the sentencing, Murdaugh continued to claim his innocence of the brutal 7 June 2021 murders.
“I’m innocent. I would never hurt by wife Maggie and I would never hurt my son PawPaw,” he told the court.
While he gave a one-line statement professing his innocence, he then appeared to nod in agreement as Judge Waters told him that he will have to deal with what he did to his wife and son every night when he closes his eyes.
“You have to see Paul and Maggie during the nighttime when you’re attempting to go to sleep. I’m sure they come and visit you. I’m sure,” he said.
Murdaugh agreed that they do “all day and every night”.
But, when he was then given another opportunity by the judge to come clean, the disgraced attorney and serial liar reiterated his statement of innocence.
“I’ll tell you again. I respect this court, but I am innocent, and I would never under any circumstances hurt my wife Maggie and I would never under any circumstances hurt my son Paul,” he said.
Judge Newman was not fooled by the convicted killer, telling him: “It might not be you. It might have been the monster you’ve become. If you take 20, 40, 50, 60 opioid pills, you become a different person.”
While he gave Murdaugh the chance to finally tell the truth once and for all, the judge admitted he “would not expect a confession of any kind” – as he pointed out Murdaugh had lied and schemed from the moment he killed Maggie and Paul.
At one point, he asked him what he had meant on the witness stand when he said “oh what a tangled web we weave”.
“I meant that I lied and continued to lie,” Murdaugh replied.
The court was expecting to hear victim impact statements but prosecutor Creighton Waters revealed that none of the victims wished to speak at this time.
Mr Waters said that Maggie and Paul “like everyone else were unaware of who he really was... no one knew who he really was and that’s chilling”.
Over the course of the investigation and the trial, the lead prosecutor said he had come to learn who the real Alex Murdaugh really was.
“I’ve looked in his eyes. He liked to stare me down as he walked by me during this trial. And I could see the real Alex Murdaugh,” he said.
Murdaugh’s family members continued to put on a united front in the courtroom with his and Maggie’s only surviving son Buster, his sister Lynne and brother John Marvin all coming along to support him.
It’s now been 21 months since Maggie and Paul were gunned down on the family’s 1,700-acre estate back on 7 June 2021.
Paul was shot twice with a 12-gauge shotgun while he stood in the feed room of the dog kennels – the second shot to his head blowing his brain almost entirely out of his skull.
After killing Paul, prosecutors said Murdaugh then grabbed a .300 Blackout semiautomatic rifle and opened fire on Maggie as she tried to flee from her husband.
She was shot five times including twice in the head after she had fallen to her knees.
Murdaugh’s conviction marks the latest twist in the saga of the man who was once the powerful heir to a South Carolina legal dynasty.
His family had reigned over the local justice system for almost a century, with three generations of the family all serving as the solicitor in the 14th Judicial Circuit solicitor’s office.
Murdaugh continued with the family tradition working in the local prosecutor’s office and also at the law firm PMPED, which was founded by his grandfather.
The murders of Maggie and Paul shocked the Hampton County community but also brought to light a series of scandals surrounding Murdaugh.
As well as the boat crash case, the fraud scheme and the botched hitman plot, there are at least two other unexplained deaths with some tie to Murdaugh.
Days on from the murders, an investigation was reopened into the 2015 death of Stephen Smith, who was found dead in the middle of the road in Hampton County.
The openly gay 19-year-old had suffered blunt force trauma to the head and his death was officially ruled a hit-and-run. But the victim’s family have long doubted this version of events, with the Murdaugh name cropping up in several police tips and community rumours.
An investigation was also reopened into another mystery death connected to the Murdaugh family – that of their longtime housekeeper Gloria Satterfield.
She died in 2018 in a mystery trip and fall accident at the family home. Murdaugh then allegedly stole around $4m in a wrongful death settlement from her sons.
Murdaugh is now also facing around 100 charges over the multi-million-dollar fraud scheme and roadside shooting cases.