|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Following the filing of convicted killer Alex Murdaugh’s 132-page appeal brief (.pdf) with the South Carolina Supreme Court in December, speculation is swirling over how the State will respond — and whether any of Murdaugh’s sweeping claims might gain traction with the justices.
While the appeal laid bare the defense’s belief that Murdaugh’s murder trial was “infected with unfairness,” prosecutors from the office of S.C. attorney general Alan Wilson are just days away from filing what many presume will be a brief full of robust counterarguments. Their task? Convincing the justices that despite the drama surrounding jury tampering, controversial evidentiary rulings, and public scrutiny of their casework — the verdict convicting Murdaugh of the murders of his wife and younger son should stand.
Once the untouchable scion of one of South Carolina’s most prominent legal and political dynasties, Murdaugh – and his empire – collapsed during the summer of 2021. His dramatic unspooling – which culminated in his convictions for murdering his wife, 52-year-old Maggie Murdaugh, and younger son, 22-year-old Paul Murdaugh – garnered international media attention. Seismic allegations of jury tampering raised in the aftermath of the trial have only further sharpened opinions about the case.
After the state’s appellate court shot down Murdaugh’s bid to hold his broader appeal in abeyance while his lawyers — Dick Harpootlian, Jim Griffin, Phillip Barber and Maggie Fox — challenged former chief justice Jean Toal’s controversial denial of his bid for a new trial on the jury tampering allegations, the latest legal battle is now his last chance to get a new trial at the state level.
For now, though, the only opinions that matter belong to the five justices of the court as they review Murdaugh’s filings – and the state’s answer – to determine whether his two murder convictions should be overturned.
Let’s take a look at how prosecutors are expected to respond to the key arguments…
***
JURY TAMPERING: IMPROPER? OR PREJUDICIAL?
The most explosive claim in Murdaugh’s appeal is that former Colleton County clerk of court Becky Hill improperly influenced the jury — and that this interference alone demands a new trial.
In their brief, the defense asserted Murdaugh “was denied his constitutional right to a fair trial by an impartial jury free from outside influences” and that evidence of prejudice created by the meddling of Hill, among others, was “proven” at a January 2024 evidentiary hearing.
In assessing the impact of the tampering, Murdaugh’s attorneys argued Toal identified the wrong legal standard when she controversially narrowed the scope of a January inquiry into the allegations. As they have insisted all along, Murdaugh’s lawyers argued Remmer v. United States was the standard Toal should have followed.
“When a state official communicates with jurors about a criminal case during trial, the law presumes the tampering was prejudicial to the defendant’s right to a fair trial,” they noted.
Had it been applied, the Remmer standard would have shifted the burden to the State to prove the communication between Hill and the jurors was harmless.
The trial court, however, rejected the correct legal standard and applied an erroneous standard of its own invention: that Murdaugh, in addition to proving that Ms. Hill did tamper with the jury about the merits of his case during trial, must also prove what the verdict would have been but for that tampering.
Defense Initial Appeal Brief (p. 32)
Murdaugh’s attorneys hammered Toal’s contention that a South Carolina case – State v. Green – instructed Palmetto State judges to ignore Remmer.
“If the Remmer presumption of prejudice ever applies, it must apply where, as here, an elected state official advocates for a guilty verdict in the jury room during trial so that she can personally profit from selling books about a guilty verdict,” they wrote. “That is not an ‘innocuous intervention.’”
According to Murdaugh’s attorneys, proving Hill communicated with at least one deliberating juror about the evidence presented at trial entitles him to a new trial.
The State will need to do a balancing act of epic proportions in its response by acknowledging Hill’s actions as inappropriate, even potentially unethical — but don’t expect them to concede it rises to the level of “structural error” requiring automatic reversal.
Instead, prosecutors will likely argue that:
- Hill’s actions, while improper, were not proven to have swayed the final verdict, as only one juror (Juror Z) testified to being affected — and even that testimony was equivocal, according to the trial court.
- Remmer doesn’t bind South Carolina courts — the State will defend Toal’s reliance on State v. Green and argue that actual — not presumed — prejudice must be shown.
- The trial court properly weighed juror credibility and found no compelling reason to throw out the verdict based on the jury’s unanimous confirmation (except one) that their decisions were not influenced.
In short: Expect prosecutors to frame Hill’s behavior as deeply troubling — but not legally fatal to the trial’s outcome.
***
RELATED | ALEX MURDAUGH’S APPEAL: THE KEY ARGUMENTS
***
THE BECKY HILL FACTOR
While the State’s response brief is expected to distance itself from the misconduct of former Colleton County clerk of court Becky Hill, it won’t be able to ignore it entirely.
Hill — whose actions lie at the center of Murdaugh’s jury tampering allegations — was arrested in May 2025 and charged with four criminal offenses, including perjury, obstruction of justice, and two counts of official misconduct. Notably absent from the slate of charges? Anything explicitly tied to the documented jury interference that prompted Murdaugh’s bid for a new trial.
The lone perjury charge does, however, stem directly from Hill’s sworn testimony during a January 2024 evidentiary hearing on jury tampering. Specifically, Hill was accused of lying under oath to former chief justice Jean Toal when she denied allowing media access to sealed exhibits in the Murdaugh case — a denial the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division (SLED) later determined was false.
This revelation further undermines Hill’s credibility, which is already central to the defense’s argument that her interactions with jurors — including allegedly urging them not to be “fooled” by Murdaugh’s testimony — constituted constitutionally impermissible interference.
Still, despite affidavits and sworn testimony from jurors detailing Hill’s alleged misconduct, no charges have been filed in connection with the tampering itself — a decision that has baffled attorneys and fueled growing skepticism about the scope of the SLED investigation.
***
“How are they going to prosecute the perjury and not prosecute the underlying issue she perjured herself about?” one South Carolina attorney told FITSNews.
Columbia attorney Joe McCulloch, who represents two of the Murdaugh jurors, called the indictment “another disturbing turn in a case defined by misconduct,” adding that one of his clients — juror Myra Crosby — believes she was deliberately removed from deliberations in order to ensure a guilty verdict.
Meanwhile, Murdaugh’s defense team wasted no time pointing to Hill’s arrest as further proof the trial was compromised from the inside out.
“These developments are serious, but they are not surprising,” attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin said in a statement following her arrest. “We have long raised our concerns about her conduct … and this arrest further underscores the need to protect the integrity of the judicial process.”
Whether the Supreme Court will agree — or view Hill’s misconduct as “harmless error” — is a pivotal question in this appeal. But one thing is clear: The credibility of the clerk who oversaw the courtroom is no longer up for debate. Only its impact is…
***
RELATED | FORMER CLERK ARRESTED
***
THE FINANCIAL CRIMES
One of the most aggressively challenged aspects of Alex Murdaugh’s murder trial — and now his appeal — is the controversial decision by former S.C. circuit court judge Clifton Newman to allow the jury to hear extensive testimony about his financial crimes. Over the course of six days and through the testimony of at least ten witnesses, jurors were walked through a labyrinth of schemes in which Murdaugh admitted to stealing millions from clients, his law firm, and others.
According to Murdaugh’s legal team, this amounted to an improper character assassination. They argue the evidence was not just irrelevant to the murder charges, but was also so prejudicial that it fundamentally compromised his right to a fair trial. Their position: Murdaugh was effectively convicted for being a thief — not a killer.
But expect prosecutors to push back hard on that framing.
In its response, the State is likely to argue that this evidence went directly to motive — which is not required to be proven under South Carolina law, but is always helpful for juries trying to understand why a crime occurred.
Their theory: At the time of the murders, Murdaugh was cornered. The walls were closing in on a series of financial lies and thefts that had gone undetected for years. On the day of the murders, the chief financial officer of his law firm had confronted him about missing fees. A key hearing in the Mallory Beach boat crash case — which could have exposed his financial dealings — was looming. The idea, the State contended, was that Murdaugh killed Maggie and Paul as a shocking diversion, aimed at generating sympathy and stalling investigations.
Prosecutors will also point out:
- The trial court properly analyzed the admissibility of this evidence under Rules 404(b) and 403 of the South Carolina Rules of Evidence.
- Rule 404(b) allows evidence of prior bad acts if it’s used to show something other than character — like motive, intent, or absence of mistake.
- Rule 403 allows for exclusion only if the prejudicial effect substantially outweighs the probative value. The trial court found it didn’t.
- Murdaugh himself opened the door to this testimony by taking the stand and speaking about his relationships and state of mind, which allowed the State to probe deeper into the context surrounding those events.
- The defense had an opportunity to challenge the evidence and witnesses, which they did, but the jury was entitled to weigh it.
In short: prosecutors will frame the financial evidence not as gratuitous mudslinging, but as the psychological and circumstantial backdrop that made the murders make sense.
***
RELATED | ‘INFECTED WITH UNFAIRNESS’: ALEX MURDAUGH’S APPEAL PUTS SOUTH CAROLINA JUSTICE ON TRIAL
***
FORENSIC EVIDENCE: UNRELIABLE OR FAIR GAME?
Alongside jury tampering and financial motive, one of the most hotly contested fronts in Alex Murdaugh’s appeal centers on forensic evidence — what was introduced, how it was presented, and whether it met accepted scientific and legal standards.
In their appeal, Murdaugh’s legal team laid out its case relating to the evidence allowed in by judge Newman – asserting the beloved jurist made “numerous evidentiary errors” by repeatedly admitting evidence over objection “that was irrelevant, unfairly prejudicial, or otherwise prohibited by the South Carolina Rules of Evidence.” They contend these errors misled the jury, filled critical gaps in the State’s case, and denied Murdaugh a fair trial.
The appeal noted when standing alone, these were “reversible errors,” but combined they created “a due process violation because they rendered Murdaugh’s criminal trial fundamentally unfair.”
Prosecutors will likely argue that the trial court acted well within its discretion — and that even if some elements of the forensic evidence were imperfect, they did not materially affect the outcome.
***
***
A major component of the State’s case was the theory that a .300 Blackout rifle — the type used to kill Maggie Murdaugh — came from a batch of family-owned firearms. But no murder weapon was ever recovered.
Instead, SLED’s firearms expert testified that shell casings found near Maggie’s body had extraction marks that were “sufficiently similar” to shell casings recovered from the Murdaugh shooting range and residence. This, they concluded, suggested they were all cycled through the same weapon — a weapon owned by the Murdaugh family.
Those weapons have never been discovered, incidentally.
The defense argued this testimony was problematic based as the toolmark methodology used is not based on objective standards and has been widely criticized by scientific bodies — including the National Academy of Sciences and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. They further argue SLED’s expert made a leap, they say, by claiming a specific weapon “likely” cycled the shell casings without any empirical data to support the uniqueness of extraction marks from .300 Blackout rifles.
Expect prosecutors to counter with:
- Precedent: Courts have long allowed firearms examiners to testify based on pattern-matching methodologies.
- Jury’s role: The State will argue it was up to the jury to assess the credibility and weight of the expert’s conclusions — not to exclude the testimony entirely.
- Corroboration: This wasn’t the only evidence tying Murdaugh to the scene, the State will emphasize — it was simply part of a broader picture.
***
***
One of the more unusual forensic disputes centers on the rebuttal testimony of Charleston County deputy Paul McManigal, who threw an iPhone around his office in an attempt to discredit the defense’s theory that Maggie’s phone lit up when tossed from a vehicle.
McManigal’s experiment sought to prove that Murdaugh threw his late wife’s cell phone from the window of a moving vehicle shortly after committing the murders. According to the defense, it was “highly prejudicial” of Newman to allow McManigal to testify because he wasn’t an expert and his “experiment” with the phone was admittedly unreliable.
Specifically, the defense argued its repeated objections regarding McManigal’s expert qualification with regard to the phone were “ignored” – and that the detective himself admitted on the stand his investigatory method of “sitting alone in an office throwing a phone on the floor without recording any data about it” was not sound.
Why does this matter?
“Without his inadmissible testimony, the state would have been forced to admit that someone other than Murdaugh was present at the scene of the murders when they occurred, had taken Maggie Murdaugh’s phone from her dead body, and had left the Moselle dog kennels with it and threw it onto the side of the main road leaving Moselle while Murdaugh was still at home,” the attorneys argued. “The state could not have convicted Murdaugh with that admission and therefore could not have convicted Murdaugh without sergeant McManigal’s inadmissible testimony.”
Prosecutors’ likely response:
- The testimony offered by McManigal was permissible as he offered observational evidence to rebut a claim — not scientific proof.
- The defense opened the door by advancing a technical theory about how the phone was discarded, the State had a right to challenge it using available tools.
- Even if the experiment was flawed, it was a small part of a weeks-long trial with far more substantial evidence and had minimal impact on the jury’s verdict.
***
RELATED | WHAT ALEX MURDAUGH’S JURY DIDN’T HEAR
***
HIDDEN TEXTS — A NEW FRONT IN THE MURDAUGH APPEAL?
One of the most controversial elements to emerge in recent months in the Murdaugh saga involves a batch of text messages between Murdaugh and Curtis “Eddie” Smith — messages which the defense claims were not disclosed to them prior to trial and could have significantly influenced their strategy.
“We were not aware of these texts,” defense attorney Dick Harpootlian told Fox News in July 2025. “Had we been, it may have made a difference in our decision not to call Eddie Smith to the stand.”
The messages — first reported by FITSNews — were extracted from Murdaugh’s own phone by SLED and were in the state’s possession before the start of the trial. They include a haunting text sent by Smith at 9:45 a.m. on June 8, 2021 — the morning after Maggie and Paul Murdaugh were killed — which read:
“Tell me what I heard is not true … call me please.”
These messages were never introduced at trial or referenced in the official timeline shared with the jury — despite Smith’s prominent role in the case. A self-described drug runner and longtime Murdaugh associate, Smith was named by the defense as a potential alternate suspect and was the subject of a 2022 motion pointing to his failed polygraph, “shaky” alibi, and alleged deception when asked if he had shot Maggie or Paul or was present at the crime scene.
Still, Smith was never called to testify — and Murdaugh’s legal team now argues that had they known the full extent of these texts, they might have leaned harder into their third-party guilt theory.
The State, however, flatly denies that the defense was kept in the dark.
“We absolutely gave the defense unredacted copies of all cell phone dumps the state possessed,” said Robert Kittle, spokesman for the S.C. Attorney General. “The defense had these texts.”
According to Kittle, the reason the texts weren’t seen by prosecutors or investigators is because they were filtered through a “taint team” — a firewall process designed to remove attorney-client privileged material before prosecutors see it.
“The prosecution was only provided redacted copies of cell phone dumps in which communications with clients were removed after a privilege review,” Kittle said. “We are still verifying, but it appears these texts may have been redacted from the copies provided to the investigators and prosecution after an appropriate review.”
While both sides now dispute who knew what — and when — the significance of the messages is not in doubt. The unanswered text from Smith raises new questions about what he knew and when he knew it — and why that evidence was omitted from the narrative presented to jurors.
As FITSNews previously reported, there has been no confirmation that Smith or his attorneys received these texts either. And to be clear, our reporting has never claimed the texts were intentionally withheld from the defense — only that they were not included in the timeline presented at trial and were never shared with the jury.
Now, with those texts exposed and defense attorneys crying foul, the question becomes whether these revelations rise to the level of a Brady violation — the failure to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense — which could form the basis for overturning a conviction.
As the appeal moves forward, this latest development adds another layer of uncertainty to an already convoluted case. And if the texts were truly overlooked by the defense, it may be the clearest evidence yet that the Murdaugh trial — already marred by jury tampering allegations — was not the airtight conviction the State has claimed.
With Murdaugh’s side of the story now public, once the State files its response, oral arguments before the Supreme Court could be set as early as this fall — though a decision might not come until 2026.
In the meantime, Becky Hill’s legal saga continues to unfold, as do calls for independent investigation into her conduct and broader transparency into the State’s handling of key players in the Murdaugh orbit.
But when the dust settles, the focus will return to one central question: Did Alex Murdaugh get a fair trial?
The State of South Carolina will soon argue — forcefully — that he did.
Stay tuned to FITSNews for continued updates as the appeal process unfolds.
***
ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
As a private investigator turned journalist, Jenn Wood brings a unique skill set to FITSNews as its research director. Known for her meticulous sourcing and victim-centered approach, she helps shape the newsroom’s most complex investigative stories while producing the FITSFiles and Cheer Incorporated podcasts. Jenn lives in South Carolina with her family, where her work continues to spotlight truth, accountability, and justice.
***
WANNA SOUND OFF?
Got something you’d like to say in response to one of our articles? Or an issue you’d like to address proactively? We have an open microphone policy! Submit your letter to the editor (or guest column) via email HERE. Got a tip for a story? CLICK HERE. Got a technical question or a glitch to report? CLICK HERE.
