Nearly a year after Alex Murdaugh was convicted of murdering his wife and son, the once powerful attorney from a storied legal family will be back before a judge, fighting for a new trial. And the proceedings will once again be televised live.
But this time, a former South Carolina Supreme Court justice will hear Murdaugh’s allegations that the Colleton County clerk of court violated his right to a fair trial by having improper conversations with jurors.
Judge Jean Toal was appointed to take over the case last month after Judge Clifton Newman, who presided over the six-week long murder trial, asked to be recused and retired.
Judge Toal has scheduled a public status conference for Tuesday, Jan. 16, in which she will decide if an evidentiary hearing into the jury tampering allegations is needed. If so, that hearing is slated for Jan. 29-31 and would likely include testimony from jurors and the accused clerk of court, Becky Hill.
In the meantime, Murdaugh’s defense team and the state are busy filing a slew of paperwork to the state Supreme Court as ordered by Chief Justice Donald Beatty.
“Because Defendant’s motion for a new trial contains allegations related to the conduct of the Colleton County Clerk of Court, I find it would be inappropriate for documents in this case to be filed in Colleton County,” said Chief Justice Beatty.
The accusations against Hill include reporting a fake Facebook post to get a juror removed, telling jurors not to be fooled by Murdaugh before he testified and frequently having private conversations with the jury foreperson in a bathroom.
Murdaugh’s defense team says jurors spoke after Hill released a book this summer, “Behind the Doors of Justice.” Its publication was recently pulled by co-author Neil Gordon who said he’d learned Hill had plagiarized part of it.
Hill has denied the jury tampering allegations one by one in an affidavit, saying “numerous misrepresentations and false statements” have been made.
But in a brief filed this week, Murdaugh’s defense contends that Hill, “an elected state official deliberately violated his constitutional right to a fair trial.”
The attorneys argue they don’t need to prove jurors were biased by Hill when they found Murdaugh guilty, only that she had improper conversations with them about evidence presented at trial. And, they don’t want Hill to be able to invoke Fifth Amendment protections if asked to testify.
“Her credibility is the crux of the matter before the Court. The purpose of the evidentiary hearing is to allow the Court to decide whether it believes the word of Ms. Hill more than it believes the sworn testimony of one or more jurors.”
The defense says it expects at least one deliberating juror to testify if an evidentiary hearing is held and at least two other people who were part of the jury to corroborate that testimony.
The state, meantime, responded in a brief this week saying, “not a single juror who actually deliberated on the case indicates that their deliberations or verdict was in any way affected by improper contacts alleged”.
“The jurors were polled individually and affirmed their verdicts on the record,” state attorneys said.
Prosecutors maintain Murdaugh must prove that Hill not only tampered with the jury but that at least one juror was prejudiced by her actions. In other words, a juror changed their verdict because of Hill.
Both the status conference and the evidentiary hearing, if held, are scheduled to take place in Columbia, more than an hour from Walterboro where Murdaugh was tried and convicted of murdering his wife Maggie and 22-year-old son Paul.
