The jury’s initial poll of its members showed nine guilty, two not guilty, and one not sure.
Forty-five minutes later, it was unanimous — disgraced South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh was guilty of gunning down his wife Maggie and son Paul on June 7, 2021.
Craig Moyer, a carpenter who served on the jury, told ABC News that it was the video with Murdaugh’s voice in the background — captured by Paul Murdaugh minutes before the brutal murders — and Murdaugh’s subsequent admission that he had, in fact, been at the kennels that night that sealed the deal for him.
“I was certain it was [Murdaugh’s] voice,” Moyer said. “Everybody else could hear [Murdaugh’s voice] too.”
On stand, Moyer said, Murdaugh came off as a “big liar.
“He knew what he wanted to say. I mean he is a lawyer,” he said. “I didn’t see any true remorse or any compassion or anything.”
Murdaugh denied being at the kennels, where Paul and Maggie were shot dead, the night of their deaths, until after he said he returned from visiting his Alzheimer’s patient mother and found their bodies. Then, after prosecutors played the video Paul had taken but not sent, Murdaugh admitted he had lied and blamed his lies on his drug addiction.
After their initial poll, Moyer said, the jurors watched the body camera footage from a responding officer and debated shotgun shells. Another poll of the jurors completed the deliberations.
Moyer told ABC that he plans to be in court Friday morning for sentencing, although he is tired of the 30-minute drive he’s taken every day for nearly a month.
“I want to see it,” he said. “It’s a decision I have to live with.”
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[Featured image: Alex Murdaugh listens to the verdict as it’s read in the courtroom at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, S.C., Thursday, March 2, 2023. (Andrew J. Whitaker/The Post And Courier via AP, Pool)]
