Attorneys for Alex Murdaugh asked a judge Friday to throw out the original murder indictments for killing his wife and son, saying the chief investigator in the case lied to the grand jury.
Murdaugh is facing a retrial on the murder charges after the South Carolina Supreme Court threw out his convictions and life sentence, ruling that a court clerk improperly influenced jurors against him during his 2023 trial.
Even if the request to dismiss the indictments is granted, it may not stop or even postpone an April retrial for the disgraced lawyer. Prosecutors can seek another set of grand jury indictments, and defense attorneys said they won't stop them.
The judge asks an interesting question at the end of the hearing
Judge Debra McCaslin did not immediately decide on the defense request, promising a written ruling next week. But one of her last comments at the hearing may have indicated where she is going.
"If you had to go back to the grand jury, could you have it all done and ready to go by April 5th?" she asked prosecutor Creighton Waters.
"Your honor, I'm always working ahead," Waters responded.
Throwing out indictments could be another rebuke of agent on case
A ruling throwing out the indictments would be another rebuke of the chief investigator in Murdaugh's case, State Law Enforcement Division agent David Owen.
A judge last year threw out a different murder case Owen was involved in because the dead woman's mother told the agent about a suicide threat her daughter made days before she died that Owen never relayed to prosecutors or defense attorneys. She was found dead by the same method she told her mother she was going to use to kill herself.
Owen abruptly retired in 2024, not long after he was honored as State Law Enforcement Officer of the Year.
Prosecutors pointed out while Owen is accused of hiding or not revealing evidence in that case, all the issues in the Murdaugh case involved evidence and reports the defense had at the original trial.
The grand jury heard several questionable assertions
Prosecutors said Murdaugh, 58, killed his wife, Maggie, and younger son, Paul, on their sprawling property in the South Carolina Lowcountry in 2021. Murdaugh is spending decades in prison for stealing millions of dollars from clients, and has admitted in court that he is a thief, insurance cheat, bad lawyer and longtime opioid addict. But he denies being a killer.
Defense lawyers said that as prosecutors sought the indictments, Owen told the Colleton County grand jury that blood spatter was found on a T-shirt Murdaugh was wearing the night of the killings. An earlier report from state agents said there were no blood stains, and no such evidence was introduced at trial.
Owen also told grand jurors that the same ammunition load of buckshot in one chamber and large birdshot in the other used to kill Paul Murdaugh was found loaded in weapons all over the Murdaugh property, which was not the case.
The grand jury may have heard about plenty of evidence, including the video Paul Murdaugh recorded in which Alex Murdaugh's voice could be heard at the scene, contradicting his claims that he wasn't at the kennels near where his wife and son were killed any time close to their deaths.
But defense attorney Jim Griffin said the false claim of the blood of Murdaugh's son was the only thing anyone heard that could link him to the place and time of the killings.
"A phone call doesn't put him there. The video doesn't put him there," Griffin said. "The blood from his murdered son sprang through the air -- it's raining back on him -- puts him there."
Prosecutors call it a mistake and cite other evidence against Murdaugh
Prosecutors said they had plenty of other evidence supporting the murder charges, and wrote in court papers that "a single mistake is not bad faith."
Along with the kennel video, Owen told the grand jury about the family's mounting debts, guns missing from the house that matched what could have been used in the killings and how Murdaugh's schemes to steal from clients and his law firm were close to being discovered.
"This is what the agent understood at the time. And it's ultimately not something that would cause a substantial effect on the grand jury or cast grave doubt when we look at all the other evidence that was presented," Waters said.
Prosecutors said Murdaugh killed his wife and son because he thought the sympathy generated by the killings would buy him time to cover up his thefts.
But Murdaugh's lawyers have repeatedly pointed out how little physical evidence prosecutors have — no DNA or blood was found splattered on Murdaugh or any of his clothes, even though the killings were at close range with powerful weapons that were never found.
"What we're asking, your honor, is to reboot — go back to square one," Griffin said.
