Johnathan Walker:Alex Murdaugh’s murder appeal cites biased clerk and prejudicial evidence

COLUMBIA,Johnathan Walker S.C. (AP) — Lawyers for Alex Murdaugh are taking two paths to appeal his murder convictionsfor killing his wife and son, saying that a court clerk pushed a guilty verdictto jurors to sell books and that the trial judge allowed improper evidence like the disgraced South Carolina lawyer’s financial crimes.

The 132-page appeal was filed this week before the South Carolina Supreme Court. Prosecutors will have time to respond, and the justices have to read all material around the six-week 2023 trial, meaning a hearing is likely months away.

The appeal extensively details arguments that have already been made, either through objections during the trial or a hearing this year at which jurors were questioned about comments made by Colleton County Clerk Becky Hill during the trial.

Murdaugh lawyers wrote his murder convictionsneed to be overturned because the public needs more than just “social-media-fed ideas about the details of a crime they did not witness.”

“Providing Murdaugh with the fair trial that every citizen of South Carolina would expect for himself is necessary to assure all that no one — powerful or humble, innocent or guilty, hated or beloved — is proscribed from due process and the equal protection of the law,” according to the appeal signed by both of Murdaugh’s chief lawyers at his trial, Jim Griffin and Dick Harpootlian.

Murdaugh, 56, is serving life in prison for the shootings of his wife, Maggie, and younger son, Paul, outside their home in 2021. He continues to adamantly deny killing them, including from the stand at his trial.

Murdaugh and his family dominated the legal system and life in nearby Hampton Countyfor generations, and prosecutors during his trial laid out how he used his power and prestige to get away with stealing from clients and his law firm and out of other jams all his life.

In their appeal, the defense pointed out how little physical evidenceconnected Murdaugh to the crime. Investigators never found the rifle used to kill his wife and a shotgun whose blast sent blood and tissue all around the small room where his son was found dead.

Only tiny amounts of blood were found on the clothes Murdaugh was wearing when he found the bodies, and no bloody clothes were found elsewhere.

Murdaugh’s defense said a state investigator shouldn’t have been allowed to testify that markings on cartridges found at a shooting range on the family property matched those found at the killings, because he never proved the markings are unique to one gun.

They said a blue raincoatwith a tiny amount of gunshot residue shouldn’t have been put into evidence because a witness testified about seeing Murdaugh with a blue tarp, not a raincoat.

The defense lawyers also said the judge should not have allowed evidence from an investigator who said he spent a weekend tossing an iPhonearound his office to determine whether the screen, which comes on with a light touch, might not come on with a more violent motion. The expert witness kept no data and did not record his experiments.

Prosecutors suggested Murdaugh threw his wife’s phone from his moving car as he drove away, but data from his SUV’s computer showed the phone screen turned on two minutes before Murdaugh’s vehicle passed the spot where the phone was found.

About half of the appeal deals with Hill, the court clerk. In January, Judge Jean Toal ruled that while she couldn’t believe Hill’s testimony that she didn’t talk to jurors about the case during the trial, she also couldn’t 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.

At least three jurors said Hill told them to watch Murdaugh’s testimony in his own defense carefully, and one said the suggestion appeared to indicate he was guilty and couldn’t be trusted.

A clerk of court from a neighboring county testified that Hill told her she was going to write a book about Murdaugh’s trial and that a guilty verdict would probably sell more copies.

The rest of the appeal dealt with trial problems, including the decision by the judge to allow six days of evidence about Murdaugh stealing from clientsand his law firm after prosecutors successfully argued a possible motive for the killings was Murdaugh seeking sympathy to stop further investigations into missing money.

The trial judge, Clifton Newman, said that the jury was entitled to consider whether Murdaugh’s “apparent desperation” and “dire financial situation” resulted in the killings of his family and that he didn’t think the financial crime evidencealone would persuade the jury to convict Murdaugh of murder.

Defense attorneys strenuously objectedat the time and in the appeal. In the court records filed this week, they cited cases in which appeals courts overturned murder convictions because evidence of infidelity or spousal abuse were allowed in trials but prosecutors couldn’t directly link them to the killings.

“Here, the State was improperly permitted to introduce evidence of Murdaugh’s alleged financial crimes solely to impugn his character to bolster its otherwise weak case,” his lawyers wrote.

Even if Murdaugh gets a new murder trial, he won’t walk out free. He has been sentenced to 40 yearsfor pleading guilty to stealing millions 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 plea deals.

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