Last night, a jury found the South Carolina lawyer, who was disgraced, guilty of murdering his wife Maggie and son Paul. Murdaugh confessed in court that he had lied to investigators about not being present at the dog kennels of the family’s home when he discovered the fatal shootings of the pair in 2021.
It took jurors less than three hours on Thursday to convict Murdaugh of two counts of murder and two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime, following more than a month of listening to dozens of witnesses in regard to the June 2021 killings.
Colleton County in South Carolina will commence a sentencing hearing at 9:30 a.m. on Friday. Murdaugh has been spared the death penalty as prosecutors have indicated they will seek life in prison without the possibility of parole.
At a Thursday night news conference, lead prosecutor Creighton Waters proclaimed, “Justice was done today.”
No matter who your family is, it makes no difference. No matter how much money you possess, or what people perceive you to have, it is of no consequence. No matter how prominent you are, it doesn’t matter. In South Carolina, justice will be served if you commit any wrongdoing, break the law, or murder.
On June 7, 2021, Maggie and Paul, the wife and younger son of Murdaugh, were found fatally shot on the family’s Islandton property. Last week, Murdaugh took the stand in his own defense and maintained that he had found the bodies after returning from a brief visit to his sick mother that night.
Judge Clifton Newman denied the defense’s request for a mistrial, claiming that the jury had been given ample time to consider the evidence and that the evidence of guilt was “overwhelming.”
The prosecution’s case against Murdaugh was largely circumstantial, due to the lack of direct evidence linking him to the scene, such as eyewitnesses, as well as phone and vehicle tracking systems that suggested his movements on the night of the killings.
Murdaugh’s prosecutors claimed that his intent was to divert attention away from and postpone investigations into his escalating financial issues. Murdaugh admitted in court to a history of deceit, which included stealing millions of dollars from his former clients and the law firm and lying to cover his tracks. Despite his repeated assertions throughout the investigation that he was not there, prosecutors pointed to another lie that played a crucial role in the case: a video clip that placed Murdaugh at the murder site shortly before the killings.
Nearly a dozen friends and family members testified that the video recorded by Paul near the family’s dog kennels shortly before prosecutors say they were killed captured Alex Murdaugh’s voice in the background. Murdaugh testified that the voice was his and that he had lied to investigators about his whereabouts out of paranoia, which he attributed to his addiction to opioid painkillers.
Dave Aronberg, state attorney for Florida’s Palm Beach County, said that, in the end, it was the victim, Paul Murdaugh, who solved his own murder.
