The South Carolina Supreme Court has overturned Alex Murdaugh’s murder convictions and life sentence for the killings of his wife and his yo
By JEFFREY COLLINS Updated 7:41 AM MST, May 13, 2026
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The South Carolina Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned the murder convictions and life sentence of disgraced lawyer Alex Murdaugh in the shooting deaths of his wife and younger son.
In a unanimous ruling, the justices said the conduct by the court clerk “egregiously attacked Murdaugh’s credibility” by suggesting to jurors his testimony could not be trusted. They also said the trial judge went too far in allowing evidence of Murdaugh’s financial crimes into his murder trial
But Murdaugh won’t be getting out of prison. The 57-year-old pleaded guilty to stealing around $12 million from his clients and currently is serving a 40-year federal sentence.
Still, the state Supreme Court ruling is a win for Murdaugh, who admits to being a thief, liar, insurance cheat and bad lawyer, but has adamantly denied killing his wife Maggie and younger son Paul since he found their bodies outside their home in 2021.
A manifestly guilty man had his murder conviction tossed because of a woman who engaged in behavior that can't be tolerated in a courtroom.
Darrell Lucus at Loud, Liberal, Christian:
One of the most sacrosanct principles of our criminal justice system is that “no one is above the law” also means “no one is below the law.” It’s a foundational principle for any society based on the rule of law. Lately, we’ve seen several cases where that principle has been trampled in cases where a defendant is clearly guilty. However, even the worst of the worst, even those who are clearly guilty, have rights that must be respected. For that reason, the original sentences had to either be reduced or thrown out altogether.
Another item in this list came roughly three hours south of my birthplace of Charlotte. Three years ago, big-shot South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh was tried and convicted for murdering his wife Maggie and son Paul. He was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life in prison. However, on Wednesday, the South Carolina Supreme Court threw out the sentence and ordered a new trial. The unanimous decision found that “shocking jury interference” by Rebecca “Miss Becky” Hill, the county clerk in Murdaugh’s home of Colleton County—halfway between Charleston and Savannah—irrevocably tainted the verdict. To my mind, she did so in a way that she belongs in prison herself.
On the face of it, Murdaugh was manifestly guilty. Murdaugh had claimed for almost two years that he wasn’t anywhere near the kennels at his country estate. However, a Snapchat video Paul recorded minutes before the shootings features Murdaugh’s voice in the background. Murdaugh subsequently admitted he had lied to police when they interviewed him—thus blowing apart his alibi.
But Murdaugh’s legal team, led by former South Carolina Democratic Party chairman Dick Harpootlian, discovered something that put a huge asterisk by that verdict. Six months after Murdaugh’s conviction, Harpootlian and his partner, Jim Griffin, revealed that at least three jurors had told them Hill had held multiple “improper, private conversations” with them about the case. Harpootlian was stunned, saying that a county clerk is “not someone who should ever talk about the case.” He knows what he’s talking about; in the early 1990s he was the solicitor, or district attorney, for a judicial circuit anchored in the state capital of Columbia.
According to Columbia’s NBC affiliate, WIS, those conversations involved telling jurors “not to be fooled” by Murdaugh’s defense and claiming that Harpootlian and Griffin were trying to “mislead” them. Griffin said that a number of jurors were outraged when Hill published a book about the case, Behind the Doors of Justice: The Murdaugh Murders. They were angry enough to reach out to Murdaugh’s defense team.
What Harpootlian and Griffin discovered made them put their appeal of the conviction on the backburner in favor of a motion for a new trial. They claimed that Hill popped into the jury room repeatedly when the defense began its case, and frequently told them not to give the defense any credibility. She also told the jurors to watch Murdaugh’s body language more than his words—strongly implying that she believed Murdaugh was lying. The motion also cited a number of passages from Hill’s book that suggested she told them that she believed Murdaugh was guilty. When the jury got the case, one of the jurors told them Hill claimed “this shouldn’t take us long,” and falsely told them they wouldn’t be allowed smoke breaks until they reached a verdict. As it turned out, the jury needed only three hours to convict Murdaugh.
Harpootlian and Griffin argued that Hill hoped to nail down a book deal and engage in a promotion blitz “that would not happen in the event of a mistrial. In so doing, they said, Hill “betrayed her oath of office for money and fame”—and “there was no remedy short of a new trial. Harpootlian was so disturbed by Hill’s actions that he asked the then-U. S. Attorney in South Carolina, Adair Ford Burroughs, to see if Hill’s actions amounted to a violation of Murdaugh’s civil rights.
The manner in which this rogue county clerk flagrantly violated Murdaugh’s right to a fair trial came to light harkens back to the actions of Tara Reade, best known for trying to upend Joe Biden’s bid for the presidency in 2020 with claims he sexually assaulted her while she was working as an aide in his Senate office. In the wake of her claims being discredited, it emerged that she’d misrepresented herself as a visiting professor at her alma mater, Antioch University Seattle. She used those bogus credentials to testify in several cases as an expert witness on domestic violence in at least 10 trials over 13 years—including a murder trial.
[...]
I’m reminded that we have a convicted rapist to thank for Miranda warnings, which are now seen as sacrosanct in law enforcement. If there is any justice, we will have a convicted murderer to thank for sending a message that rogue clerks and prosecutors who trample on the rights of the manifestly guilty will be dealt with severely. To my mind, the only way to restore confidence in the system is for Rebecca Hill to GO TO PRISON.
Darrell Lucus nails it: Colleton County Clerk Rebecca Hill helped sank a clearly guilty Alex Murdaugh’s life sentence in prison by having that thrown out.
Ep 4 - Part Two: Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal (Season 2)
The Murdaughs are a prominent family in South Carolina, until a fatal boating accident begins the unraveling of their legacy; Maggie Murdaugh and son Paul are later found murdered, bringing to light a century of corruption, power and cover-ups.
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There’s never been a millionaire executed in the United States
By Stephen Millies
Richard “Alex” Murdaugh was convicted on March 2 of murdering his spouse and youngest son. Those are horrible crimes. So why didn’t the South Carolina prosecutor demand the death penalty for the wealthy white lawyer instead of seeking a life sentence for Murdaugh? It isn’t as if the Palmetto State has been shy about inflicting capital punishment.
Capital punishment in the United States was aptly described by John Arthur Spenkelink, who was electrocuted in Florida in 1979. He said, “Them without the capital get the punishment.”
