Brief hearing sets stage for new round of motions as Murdaugh trial approaches
At a hearing lasting barely five minutes, Alex Murdaugh’s attorneys and state prosecutors announced Friday that they’d generally agreed on a questionnaire for prospective jurors and established a schedule for an expected flurry of upcoming motions.
With Murdaugh not in attendance, Murdaugh’s attorneys, Jim Griffin and Dick Harpootlian, and lead prosecutor Creighton Waters briefly entered a few points onto the record and set the stage for a longer evidentiary hearing planned for next Friday.
The hearing comes as the pace of pre-trial motions pick up with less than two months before the planned start of the closely watched murder trial in the killings of Murdaugh’s wife, Maggie, and son, Paul.
While Murdaugh waived his right to appear on Friday, Judge Clifton Newman warned that the disgraced former attorney would be required to appear in court for upcoming, “substantial” hearings. Remarking on the defense’s recent motion that Murdaugh not be shackled when media with cameras were in the court, Waters, an assistant attorney general, said that the state would “always defer to what the court orders and what the security officers deem appropriate.”
In court, Waters stated that the state and the defense had agreed on a general jury questionnaire that would be presented to Newman on Monday.
Jury questionnaires are used to determine whether prospective jurors are qualified to serve impartially on a jury.
Both sides also agreed to a plan to submit motions by Monday, with responses filed Wednesday in advance of next Friday’s hearing that could determine what evidence both sides are allowed to present at trial.
The prosecution indicated it would likely not be responding next week to two motions submitted by Murdaugh’s attorneys attacking the DNA and blood spatter evidence supposedly linking him to the shootings.
“We are in the process of assessing those,” Waters said. “That’s not necessarily what we will hear next Friday, but we are working on that and we will file a formal response when we have the information that we need.”
Across two motions, Griffin and Harpootlian tore into law enforcement’s analysis of a white cotton T-shirt that Murdaugh was wearing the night of the murders. The prosecution has alleged that an expert identified a fine mist of blood covering the shirt, which comes from being in the presence of someone who is shot.
The defense attorneys have argued that the outside expert originally determined that was no so-called “back spatter” on the shirt. The expert changed his mind, the motion alleges, after he was visited by South Carolina Law Enforcement Division investigators who pressured him to make a new determination.
The T-shirt was found to be destroyed while being held in evidence.
Murdaugh has also filed a notice of alibi challenging the prosecution’s timeline. In the notice, filed in Colleton County court, Murdaugh states that while he was at the hunting lodge Moselle the night of the murders, Maggie and Paul were still alive around 9 p.m. when Murdaugh left to go visit his mother in nearby Varnville. While on the drive to and from Varnville, Murdaugh made multiple phone calls to friends and relatives, he said.
He discovered Maggie and Paul’s bodies on his return to the home, according to the court filings.
His attorneys requested that future hearings be held in Richland County. Murdaugh is currently incarcerated at the Alvin S Glenn Detention Center in Richland County.
