'Murdaugh murders' will have a redo in South Carolina

South Carolina’s top court undid the murder convictions against Alex Murdaugh, the lawyer a jury had found guilty of murdering his wife and one of his sons in a trial that captivated the country, reported The New York Times.

In a unanimous opinion, the State Supreme Court said that “shocking jury interference” by a court clerk who oversaw jurors during the 2023 trial meant that Mr. Murdaugh’s convictions and life sentence must be overturned.

Mr. Murdaugh, 57, will remain in prison because he is also serving decades-long prison sentences after pleading guilty to stealing millions of dollars from his law firm and his former clients. While he has admitted to embezzlement, he has long maintained — including during testimony at his trial — that he did not kill his wife, Maggie, 52, and their younger son, Paul, 22.

The South Carolina attorney general's office, which prosecuted the case, will retry Mr. Murdaugh for the killings.

The surprise reversal of Mr. Murdaugh’s murder convictions followed nearly five years of whirlwind drama that began in one of South Carolina’s least populous counties and grew to capture global attention. In the end, the trial — one of the highest profile in the state — was upended by a small-town clerk who could not resist injecting herself into the spectacle.

Mr. Murdaugh’s lawyers hailed the decision, Alex has said from Day 1 that he did not kill his wife and son,” the lawyers, Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin, said in a statement. “We look forward to a new trial conducted consistent with the Constitution.”

The Murdaugh murders, as they came to be known, took place in June 2021 on the Murdaugh family’s hunting estate, in a rural part of South Carolina’s Lowcountry.

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