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Joshua Boucher/The State by way of AP, Pool
Alex Murdaugh desires a brand new trial over the murders of his spouse and youthful son, submitting court docket papers that accuse the clerk of court docket in Colleton County, S.C., of tampering with the jury who discovered him responsible.
Murdaugh, the disbarred legal professional and scion of a once-influential household, was sentenced to life with out parole in March for the murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh, after jurors discovered him responsible within the 2021 slayings. He additionally faces a raft of costs over alleged monetary crimes throughout his years working towards legislation.
Protection attorneys for Murdaugh, 55, have already launched an attraction of the homicide verdict. Now they’re seeking to put that effort on maintain to allow them to pursue a brand new trial altogether, alleging that Clerk of Court docket Rebecca Hill violated her oath of workplace in addition to their consumer’s constitutional proper to a good trial and neutral jury.
Here is a fast information to this newest twist within the Murdaugh homicide case:
Hill is accused of ‘improper feedback and efforts to affect the jurors’ verdict’
Murdaugh attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin accuse Hill, who was elected in 2020, of telling the jury “to not be fooled” by the protection workforce’s case. In addition they say that when Murdaugh was about to testify, Hill warned jurors to “watch him carefully.”
Hill didn’t reply to NPR’s request for remark or a response to the brand new submitting.
In one other severe cost, the protection attorneys allege that Hill “invented a narrative a few Fb put up to take away a juror she believed won’t vote responsible.”
The court docket submitting additionally seeks to boost suspicions about what it calls Hill’s “frequent personal conversations with the jury foreperson.” However as South Carolina legal professional Sarah A. Ford and authorized director for a victims’ help program noted via X (previously Twitter), various mundane circumstances might immediate personal conversations between a clerk of court docket and a jury chief, together with medical appointments and scheduling points.
Murdaugh’s workforce additionally accuses Hill of pressuring jurors as they started deliberations, allegedly telling them, “this should not take us lengthy.”
Within the protection’s narrative, Hill was allegedly motivated by two essential elements: the removing of “a juror she believed won’t vote responsible”; and her personal self-interest, in publishing a ebook in regards to the trial and collaborating in media protection. Hill just lately revealed the ebook she co-authored; Amazon at the moment lists it as a finest vendor.
The submitting references 2 sworn affidavits from jurors
The protection submitting references statements from 4 jurors — however in two of these cases, the jurors didn’t signal the affidavits that quote them. Fairly, their feedback are introduced by Holli Miller, a paralegal from Harpootlian’s legislation agency who signed the affidavits.
In Juror No. 741’s case, the submitting mentioned, the feminine juror initially agreed to signal the affidavit, however Murdaugh’s attorneys had been “unable to rearrange along with her an appropriate time and place.” The shortage of the opposite juror’s signature was not defined.
The jurors who signed their very own affidavits embody Juror No. 785, who was dismissed from the jury by Decide Clifton Newman over “improper conversations” with folks not concerned with the case. To these following the case, the dismissed juror grew to become generally known as “the egg woman,” as a result of she made positive to take eggs residence along with her that one other juror had introduced in.
Within the Murdaugh workforce’s telling, Hill questioned Juror No. 785 a few Fb put up in regards to the trial and the juror that it says was wrongly attributed to her ex-husband.
However because the submitting mentions in a footnote, Juror No. 785’s conduct was additionally scrutinized over one other incident, after a co-worker of the juror’s tenant wrote to the court docket to say she “had expressed an opinion” in regards to the case throughout a go to to the tenant.
Murdaugh’s workforce desires an evidentiary listening to
The submitting was made on Tuesday with the South Carolina Court docket of Appeals — which then gave prosecutors a 10-day deadline to file their response.
Harpootlian and Griffin argue that there’s sufficient proof of jury tampering to warrant an evidentiary listening to — the subsequent step of their bid to show the jury was unfairly biased.
If the attorneys can substantiate their claims in opposition to Hill, it might put a heavy burden on the prosecution to show “that such contact with the juror was innocent to the defendant,” Murdaugh’s workforce says within the submitting, citing a authorized precedent.
The presumption of prejudice stemming from improper contact with a juror “is even stronger the place the contact was made by a court docket official,” the submitting states. Citing one other precedent, it provides, “a brand new trial should be granted until it clearly seems that the subject material of the communication was innocent and couldn’t have affected the decision.”
Murdaugh was just lately disciplined over jail insurance policies
The movement for a brand new trial was filed every week after Murdaugh was punished for violating jail insurance policies relating to his entry to the skin world.
Over the summer time, the South Carolina Division of Corrections says, legal professional Griffin recorded Murdaugh throughout a telephone name so he might give the recording to the producers making a documentary about his case. And when Murdaugh’s telephone privileges had been revoked, they are saying, he used one other inmate’s PIN quantity to make one other name — committing one other coverage violation.
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