Alex Murdaugh wants murder indictments tossed, saying agent lied
Attorneys for Alex Murdaugh are expected in court Friday to ask a judge to throw out the original murder indictments for killing his wife and son, alleging 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 longshot request to dismiss the indictments is granted by Judge Debra McCaslin at Friday's pretrial hearing, it may not stop or even postpone an April retrial for the disgraced lawyer. Prosecutors can seek another set of grand jury indictments as soon as next month, and defense attorneys said they won't stop them.
But a ruling for Murdaugh would be another rebuke of the chief investigator, 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.
Owen abruptly retired in 2024, not long after he was honored as State Law Enforcement Officer of the Year. He has acknowledged mistakes in the Murdaugh case, but denied intentionally misleading the grand jury.
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.
Murdaugh's lawyers have repeatedly pointed out how little 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.
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 wasn't the case.
Prosecutors have rejected allegations of deliberate misconduct, and wrote that "a single mistake is not bad faith." They said they have plenty of other evidence supporting the murder charges.
Owen told grand jurors about the video Paul Murdaugh recorded in which Alex Murdaugh's voice could be heard at the scene, contradicting his denials. Owen also told them about the family's mounting debts and how Murdaugh's schemes to steal from clients and his law firm were close to being discovered.
"Even if the defense is able to convince the judge that this chief investigator lied and the case should be dismissed, there's a lot of evidence here that does not relate to the chief investigator," legal analyst Jessica Levinson told "CBS Mornings" this week. "I think the prosecution would likely feel that they could bring a very similar case to the jury, hoping they would get another conviction."
Even with the original convictions overturned, Murdaugh remains in prison on separate financial crime sentences. The outcome of the murder case will not determine when he could be released.
Prosecutors previously argued that Murdaugh killed his wife and son because he thought the sympathy generated by the killings would buy him time to cover up his thefts.
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Alex Murdaugh's lawyers back in court, hoping to get murder indictments dismissed
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