A judge in South Carolina has denied Alex Murdaugh’s bid for a new trial after his defence team accused a clerk of court of tampering with a jury.
Judge Jean Toal ruled that even if Colleton County clerk Becky Hill did tell jurors to watch Murdaugh’s actions and body language on the stand, the defence failed to prove that such comments directly influenced their decision to find him guilty.
One member of the jury that convicted Murdaugh of murdering his wife and son gave evidence on Monday that when the clerk urged jurors to watch his actions and body language during the trial, it made him seem guilty — and those comments influenced her decision to convict.
But the 11 other jurors said they based their guilty verdicts only on the testimony, evidence and law presented at trial, and just one of them mentioned hearing anything similar about Murdaugh from Ms Hill.
All 12 jurors took the 90-mile trip from Colleton County to Columbia to give what was typically about three minutes of testimony, mostly yes-or-no questions from the judge’s script.
Murdaugh, now a convicted killer, disbarred attorney and admitted thief serving a life sentence, wore an orange prison jumpsuit as he watched with his lawyers.
Ms Hill also testified, denying she ever spoke about the case or Murdaugh at all with jurors.
“I never talked to any jurors about anything like that,” she said.
But Judge Jean Toal questioned her truthfulness after Ms Hill said she used “literary licence” for some things she wrote about in her book on the trial, including whether she feared as she read the verdict that the jury might end up finding him not guilty.
“I did have a certain way I felt,” Ms Hill said.
Murdaugh’s defence later called Barnwell County clerk Rhonda McElveen, who helped Ms Hill during the trial. Ms McElveen said that Hill suggested before the trial that they should write a book on the case together, “because she wanted a lake house and I wanted to retire”, and that a guilty verdict would sell more books.
But under cross examination, Ms McElveen said she did not approach the trial judge because she did not think any of Ms Hill’s comments or behaviours rose to the level of misconduct.
Ms Hill was also questioned about why she was telling people hours before the jury received the case that she expected deliberations to be short. The clerk said it was a gut feeling after years in a courtroom.
The unusual hearing was prompted in part by a sworn statement from the first juror called to the stand on Monday.
She affirmed what she said last August, repeating on Monday that Ms Hill told jurors to note Murdaugh’s actions and “watch him closely” when he testified in his own defence.
“She made it seem like he was already guilty,” said the woman, identified only as Juror Z. Asked whether this influenced her vote to find him guilty, she said: “Yes ma’am.”
In later questioning, the juror said she also stands by another statement she made in the August affidavit: that it was her fellow jurors, more than the clerk’s statements, that influenced her to vote guilty.
“I had questions about Mr Murdaugh’s guilt but voted guilty because I felt pressured by other jurors,” she said.
The rest of the jury filed in one by one and said their verdicts were not influenced by anything outside the trial. One said he heard Ms Hill say “watch his body language” before Murdaugh testified, but said Ms Hill’s comment did not change his mind.
“What matters is what the jurors heard” and whether that persuaded them to change their verdicts to guilty in a way that was anything other than the product of honest deliberation, prosecutor Creighton Walters said in closing.
“You have 11 of them strong as a rock who said this verdict was not influenced,” Mr Waters said. “The evidence is overwhelming from the people who mattered.”
Defence lawyer Jim Griffin, in his closing, cited case law in arguing that any communication about a case from court staff to jurors is presumptively prejudicial.
He said the defence clearly proved Ms Hill made prejudicial comments to the jury, and “one of those jurors says it influenced my verdict. How is that not prejudice?”.
Murdaugh’s fall from his role as an lawyer lording over his small county to a sentence of life without parole has been exhaustively covered by true crime shows, podcasts and bloggers.
Jury tampering is the basis for Murdaugh’s appeal, but Ms Toal set a difficult standard for his lawyers. She ruled the defence must prove that potential misconduct by Ms Hill directly led jurors to change their minds to guilty.
The defence argued if they prove the jury was tampered with, it should not matter whether a juror openly said their verdict changed, because even subtle influence could have kept Murdaugh from getting a fair trial.
Ms Toal was chief justice of the South Carolina Supreme Court for 15 years before retiring. She was appointed by the current high court justices to rule on the juror misconduct allegations.
She also limited what could be asked of Ms Hill, ruling out extensive questions about a criminal investigation into whether the elected clerk used her office for financial gain, emailed prosecutors with suggestions on how to discredit a defence expert, conspired with her son who is charged with wiretapping county phones, or plagiarised part of her book on the case using a passage from a BBC reporter who accidentally emailed her instead of her boss with a similar address.
“I’m very, very reluctant to turn this hearing about juror contact into a wholesale exploration about every piece of conduct by the clerk,” Ms Toal said.
Ms Hill, in a sworn statement, has denied any jury tampering. She did admit to the lifting the writing of the BBC reporter.
“I did plagiarise … and for that I am sorry,” Ms Hill said from the witness box.
Murdaugh is also serving 27 years after admitting he stole 12 million dollars (£9.46 million) from his law firm and from settlements he gained for clients on wrongful death and serious injury lawsuits. Murdaugh promised not to appeal that sentence as part of his plea deal.
But Murdaugh has remained adamant that he did not kill his younger son Paul with a shotgun and his wife Maggie with a rifle, since the moment he told deputies he found their bodies at their Colleton County home in 2021. He testified in his own defence.
Murdaugh has not started the regular appeals of his sentence, where his lawyers are expected to argue a number of reasons why his murder trial was unfair, including the judge allowing voluminous testimony of his financial crimes.
They said this enabled prosecutors to smear Murdaugh with evidence not directly linked to the killings.
