South Carolina’s attorney general has filed a detailed response to convicted killer Alex Murdaugh’s push for a new trial that includes an equally detailed affidavit from the court clerk Murdaugh’s attorneys accused of jury tampering.
The filing notes that arguments from Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin — that Colleton County Court Clerk Rebecca Hill urged jurors not to be “misled” by the defense case, “fooled by” Murdaugh’s testimony, and to carefully watch his body language — were nearly identical to comments from prosecutors’ own opening statements and closing arguments.
Harpootlian and Griffin alleged in September that Hill, who wrote a book about the case, pushed jurors to find Murdaugh guilty in the murders of his wife and son, as CrimeOnline reported. The jury took less than three hours to find that Murdaugh gunned down Maggie Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh on his family’s hunting property in June 2021.
Paul Murdaugh was awaiting trial at the time in connection with a deadly drunken boat crash in 2019.
Several jurors who spoke with media after the trial later said it was Murdaugh’s own testimony that convinced them of his guilt.
Attorney General Alan Wilson’s 48-page response calls the defense’s motion “a sweeping conspiratorial theory” and adds that “not every inappropriate comment made by a member of court staff to a juror rises to the level of constitutional error.”
SCAG response to defense motion for new trial by kc wildmoon on Scribd
Hill’s sworn affidavit addresses many of the defense’s points from its request for a new trial but not all.
“There are numerous misrepresentations and false statements contained within the Motion for New Trial to which I was not requested to specifically address,” Hill said. “As such, this affidavit is not intended to address every allegation contained within the Motion for New Trial.”
Specifically, Hill denied 26 allegations made in the defense motion, including the comments about warning the jurors not to be “misled” or “fooled by” the defense case or Murdaugh’s testimony.
The attorney general’s filing included sworn statements from 10 jurors denying that they were influenced or pressured to find Murdaugh guilty by any court official or employee, including Hill. Two other jurors provided affidavits for the defense motion. Another juror was dismissed because of inappropriate outside discussions about the case and became key in the defense motion.
The state’s filing also included statements from four other court employees saying they did not witness anything inappropriate from the clerk.
The filing itself was highly dismissive of the defense claims, noting that “never does the law permit highly motivated convicts to put their own jury on trial.”
The filing notes that an accusation made by one of the jurors to the defense — that Hill told jurors to “watch [Murdaugh] closely,” to “look at his actions,” and to “look at his movements,” — is suspiciously similar to part of prosecutors’ opening statements, when they told the jury:
“You’re going to see video statements of Alex Murdaugh. You’re going to see a body-worn camera of him at the scene when law enforcement arrives and hear what he says, and hear what he says about that night. You’re going to hear three recorded statements on video that he gave with law enforcement, and you’re going to hear how things progressed about what he says, and what he savs he did that night. Watch those closely. Watch his expressions. Listen to what he’s saying. Listen to what he’s not saying. Use that common sense. Does this seem right or does something seem a little off? Does something seem a little off about this?”
Prosecutors also told jurors, in closing arguments, that Murdaugh “fooled Maggie and Paul, too, and they paid for it with their lives. Don’t let him fool you, too.”
The filing includes an in depth discussion of the dismissal of Juror 785, central to the defense motion, in which Harpootlian and Griffin accused Hill of “making up” a Facebook post from the juror’s ex-husband to get her removed from the jury because she was leaning to vote not guilty.
Prosecutors make clear that the supposed Facebook post had nothing to do with the juror’s dismissal but was instead related to discussions she had with two tenants about the case.
Harpootlian and Griffin have also moved to have Judge Clifton Newman, who presided over the murder trial, removed from the appeals process.
Murdaugh, who lost his law license and his law firm in the wake of the murders and the discovery that he had siphoned millions of dollars from his clients and his great-grandfather’s law firm, is serving two life sentences without the possibility of parole for the murders of Paul and Maggie Murdaugh.
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[Featured image: Alex Murdaugh/South Carolina Department of Corrections]
