Alex Murdaugh’s defense team wants the murder indictments against him thrown out before his retrial. They argued in court on Friday that the grand jury that charged him heard false evidence.
The hearing took place Friday, Nov. 13, in Lexington before Judge Debra McCaslin. She did not rule from the bench and said she would issue a written decision next week.
Murdaugh is accused of killing his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul, at the family’s Colleton County property in 2021. He is waiting for a new trial because the South Carolina Supreme Court threw out his 2023 convictions and life sentences. The court found that a court clerk had improperly influenced the jury.
Defense attorney Jim Griffin said former SLED Senior Agent David Owen was the only witness before the Colleton County grand jury that indicted Murdaugh in July 2022. According to the defense, Owen gave the grand jurors wrong information about blood spatter and about the shotgun shells found at the home.
Griffin said the blood spatter claim was the only thing the grand jury heard that tied Murdaugh to the scene at the time of the killings. Owen has admitted making mistakes in the case but denies that he set out to mislead the grand jury.
Prosecutors agreed that Owen made errors when he described the ammunition. But lead prosecutor Creighton Waters said those errors did not change the outcome, and that there was plenty of other evidence against Murdaugh. In court filings, the state argued that a single mistake is not bad faith.
The defense is asking the judge to dismiss the indictments without prejudice. That would let prosecutors take the case to a new grand jury, and Murdaugh’s lawyers said they would not try to stop that.
Murdaugh has denied killing his wife and son. He is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court.
Source: Associated Press via Washington Times, ABC News 4, Court TV
