Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Alex Murdaugh: New Judge to Decide If Convicted Family Killer Gets New Trial

Episode Date: December 29, 2023

The disgraced South Carolina lawyer convicted of killing his wife and son is pushing for a new murder trial over allegations of jury tampering. A hearing will be held in the coming months to decide whether Alex Murdaugh’s case will be presented in front of a new jury. A new judge, retired South Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal, will oversee Murdaugh’s hearing after Judge Clifton Newman withdrew himself from the high-profile case. Law&Crime’s Angenette Levy discusses the jury tampering allegations and Murdaugh’s potential for a new trial with attorneys Joe McCulloch and Ronnie Richter in this episode of Crime Fix, a daily show that dives deep into the most trending stories in true crime.HOST:Angenette Levy: twitter.com/Angenette5CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoPodcasting - Brad MaybeScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. The state versus Richard Alexander Murdoch defendant. Indictment for murder, SC code 16-3-0010, CDR code0116. Guilty. Verdict. The clerk of court in Alec Murdoch's double murder trial will be in the hot seat in the new year to answer to allegations of jury tampering by Murdoch's defense team. So did Becky Hill meddle in deliberations so she could write a book on the case to cash in? A new judge has been assigned to find out. I'm Anjanette Levy and this is a special edition of Crime Fix where we're looking at what's ahead

in Alec Murdoch's double murder case as he asks for a new trial based on claims of jury tampering. Murdoch's lawyers claim clerk of court Becky Hill was hell-bent on ensuring a quick guilty verdict so she could write a book about the case. Behind the Doors of Justice has suddenly ceased publication after Hill's ghostwriter, Neil Gordon, discovered that Hill engaged in plagiarism using a BBC writer's work in the book without citation. The jury in Colleton County found Alec Murdoch guilty of murdering his wife Maggie and son Paul after deliberating for just three hours following six weeks of testimony. Last September, Alec Murdoch's attorneys announced

they were filing a motion for a new trial based on two jurors' claims that Hill made comments about Alec Murdoch and her belief in his guilt. Jurors must be free from outside influences and must decide the case solely on the evidence presented in the courtroom, subject to the rules of evidence, subject to the rules of the court, and most importantly, subject to the crucible of cross-examination that's guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, and that is the right to confront witnesses. When jurors receive private communications outside the confines of a public courtroom, the Sixth Amendment is violated and numerous other constitutional rights are violated. And that's not Jim Griffin on the law.

That is the law of the land. And I want to quote from a decision from the South Carolina Court of Appeals, which is behind me. One juror claimed Hill had a number of conversations with the jury foreperson, and a second, who became known for bringing a dozen eggs to court, claimed that Hill had asked her her feelings about the case. Judge Newman later removed the egg lady juror from the jury during closing arguments following concerns that she spoke to tenants about the case. That juror has disputed that she spoke about the case with her tenants or anyone else outside of the jury for that matter. I have as you know we've had some discussions with you over the past couple of days concerning indications

of conversations with a few folks not on the jury concerning the case and expressing some opinion about the case. I have

reviewed everything including statements given by individuals and recorded interviews, and concluded that despite my order to not discuss the case with anyone, that intentionally or unintentionally you've had some discussions with some folks not on the jury, which is going to require me to remove you from the jury. You have been, by all accounts, a great juror and smiled consistently and have seemingly been attentive to the case and performed well. And I'm sure that with all the time you've invested in it, you probably hate not to continue.

Or maybe you're ready to go. I don't know. But I certainly want to thank you for your service. I'm not suggesting that you intentionally did anything wrong. Murdoch's defense team claimed that Hill told the egg lady juror that her ex-husband posted on Facebook that she was talking about the case at a bar. But it turns out that man denies that he ever posted that. The entire thing is an absolute mess. And some of the 12 jurors have actually lawyered up. And perhaps unsurprisingly, they are saying different things. South Carolina is a small

place and everybody seems to know everybody. And in this case, things seem to be intertwined all of the time. Joe McAuliffe represents two of the jurors who claim Hill acted improperly. He is also a former law partner of Dick Harpootlian, one of Alec Murdoch's lawyers. But he also represented two of the victims in the boat crash case where Mallory Beach was killed. They came forward, I believe, out of a sense of justice or injustice that they believed had been done. And I don't know their, I wouldn't state their public opinion on his guilt or innocence, but I can say that their coming forward,

their willingness to give the information they have under oath to Dick and Jim Griffin was out of a sense that even the worst of us deserve a fair trial. And like the old saying goes, to paraphrase, you can't be a little bit pregnant and you can't have kind of a fair trial or a little bit of a fair trial. Has SLED tried to interview your clients? You know, SLED contacted me as well as mr waters and my response to them was that my clients have already executed sworn affidavits and they stood ready to at the appropriate time and in the

appropriate forum uh to be interviewed and to testify about what they knew, and that testimony would be in conformity with their affidavits. What I did say to both SLED and the Attorney General's office is, and this was at a time, gosh, a month ago, it was a time before the judge disqualified himself from hearing this motion, that would be Judge Newman, I said to both SLED and the Attorney General's office, you know, this is such an intrusion into the lives of these jurors, and I don't want them to have to do this multiple times. While Joe McCullough's clients say Clerk Hill acted improperly, attorney Ronnie Richter represents four jurors who might tell a different story.

The Attorney General's office wrote a response to Murdoch's motion for a new trial and included a table that seemed to indicate that some of the jurors SLED agents interviewed had said that Hill made statements about the case, while others indicated that she hadn't. The AG also doubted the claims made by the Egg Lady juror, which Joe McAuliffe isn't taking lightly. If you'll allow me to read from the first page of that motion, one of my clients is said to have been a juror who participated in deliberations, one who was removed for dishonestly concealing her own improper communications about the case. Well, let me say two things about that.

First, that's not consistent with the judge's ruling that she had done nothing wrong, but that in an abundance of caution, basically, he was removing her. So to mischaracterize the circumstances of her removal, which had I been her lawyer then, I suppose maybe there might have been a different outcome. But I think that's inaccurate. And frankly, it's ghastly to me for a prosecutor, a deputy attorney general, to characterize a juror who serves selflessly for six weeks for 10 bucks a day to disparage them in that way. A three-day evidentiary hearing has been scheduled for late January on the jury tampering claims. We know Judge Newman will not be presiding over it. Retired South Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toll has been appointed to handle the case. She's well respected by lawyers

on both sides. Creighton Waters posted a photo with her on Twitter a couple of months ago, and Dick Harpootlian brought her up during a hearing in 2022. He actually wanted her to preside over the discovery process. I asked the court to appoint a special master to supervise discovery in this case. A number of retired judges have done this in the past, not because you can't do it, but because it would consume all of your time to do it. Someone like a retired justice chief, Chief Justice Toll, there are a number of them out there that do it in civil cases all the time. So I'd ask the court to consider appointing a master to supervise the state in reviewing and assisting them in reviewing the documents, make sure we get what we should get. Again, it's South Carolina and everybody seems to know everybody.

But now there are questions, according to Joe McCullough, about whether the AG's office will stay on the case as this motion for a new trial moves forward. the deliberations about the juror who was removed, one of my clients, that the Attorney General's Office had information about some of the issues surrounding that lady. And they may find themselves as a witness, one or more of their attorneys may be witnesses in the proceeding. So I think that, you know, from a public optics standpoint, and we all in our legal profession operate on the appearance of impropriety. I just think it makes far more sense for us to go through this tunnel of inquiry and come out into the sunlight of a decision with no one being able to say, whether it's on the defense or the prosecution side, able to say there was any pulling of punches, any bias in favor one way or the other.

I reached out to the AG's office with this question about whether the office would step aside for this hearing, and I received a no comment in response. This is what Creighton Waters said about the possibility of a new trial for the murders of Maggie and Paul just recently. With a certainty that he's going to be in prison for the rest of his life, regardless of what happens with the murders. And let's be clear, he's got two life sentences for murder and those aren't going away. We're going to litigate that. And if we, for some reason,

some small chance we have to retry it, we'll do that as well. So there you have it. Creighton Waters isn't shutting the door on the possibility of having to retry the case based on these jury tampering allegations. And at this point, they are just allegations. SLED is investigating and a statewide grand jury has been convened to look into public corruption in the 14th Judicial Circuit. That investigation involves Becky Hill's son, Colt Hill, who's been charged with wiretapping using his county computer. That investigation is ongoing, and Becky Hill's cell phone has been seized as a part of it. So will Alec Murdoch get a new trial? It's a wait and see type of situation. That evidentiary hearing will likely reveal a lot.

And again, it has not yet been scheduled. You can, of course, count on law and crime to stay on top of it for you and bring you complete coverage of that hearing once it is scheduled. That's it for this edition of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with us and for joining us tonight. We will see you back here again tomorrow. Until then, have a great night.