Alex Murdaugh could get a new murder trial after the South Carolina Supreme Court agreed to hear his jury tampering appeal.
The court could overturn a judge’s decision in January not to grant him a new trial—his legal team made the request in late 2023 over claims that now-former Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill of prejudicing the jury. Murdaugh was convicted in March last year for the 2021 murders of his wife, Maggie, and youngest son, Paul.
The disgraced South Carolina attorney was sentenced to life in prison for the killings. But his legal team argue that Hill’s alleged interference in the case warrants a new trial.
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They claim Hill told jurors not to believe Murdaugh’s testimony and other defense evidence while also pressuring the jury to reach a quick verdict because a conviction would help boost sales of her self-published book about the trial. Hill vehemently denies the allegations.
Hill apologized in December after the co-author of her book accused her of plagiarism. She resigned from the Colleton County Court earlier this year.
In January, former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal ruled against Murdaugh’s bid for a new trial, though one juror testified at an evidentiary hearing that Hill’s comments influenced their opinion about the case. Although Toal didn’t agree with Murdaugh’s legal team that the jury was prejudiced, she criticized Hill as someone who was “attracted to the siren call of celebrity.”
Murdaugh’s attorneys wrote in their request for the state supreme court review that the “legal principle of major importance is whether it is presumptively prejudicial for a state official to secretly advocate for a guilty verdict through ex parte contacts with jurors during trial, or whether a defendant, having proven the contacts occurred, must also somehow prove the verdict would have been different at a hypothetical trial in which the surreptitious advocacy did not occur,” according to CNN.
In an order signed Tuesday, the South Carolina Supreme Court justices agreed to hear the appeal.
In addition to his life sentences for murder, Murdaugh was also sentenced to 27 years in prison in November over state fraud charges and another 40 years in April over federal fraud charges.
