Life sentence for US lawyer who killed his wife and son

WALTERBORO, SC (AP) — In the culmination of the once-prominent South Carolina attorney’s fall from grace, a judge sentenced Alex Murdaugh to life without parole on Friday, a day after he was convicted of murder for the shooting deaths of his wife and son. It was a case that revealed the collapse of a powerful southern family with tales of privilege, greed and dependency.

The Colleton County jury deliberated for less than three hours Thursday before convicting Murdaugh of killing his 22-year-old son, Paul, with a shotgun and his 52-year-old wife, Maggie, with a rifle on June 7, 2021 .

Murdaugh will soon be transferred to a state prison where he will be held in maximum security conditions.

Judge Clifton Newman asked Murdaugh if he meant anything before sentencing him to two consecutive life sentences, and the South Carolina attorney maintained his innocence.

“As I say again, I respect this court, but I am innocent. I would never, under any circumstances, harm my wife Maggie and I would never, under any circumstances, harm my son Paul-Paul,” Murdaugh replied.

“And maybe it wasn’t you. I could have been the monster you became” by taking large amounts of opiates, Judge Newman replied, noting that Murdaugh had been addicted to painkillers for decades.

Prosecutors have asked for life in prison to punish Murdaugh for what they say are decades of lying, stealing and using his family’s considerable influence in their small county for personal gain. Any sentence would have no possibility of parole.

To hear his sentence, Murdaugh appeared in the same circuit courtroom where his father, grandfather and great-grandfather tried cases as elected prosecutors for more than 80 years. His grandfather’s portrait hung in the back of the courtroom until the judge ordered it removed for this trial.

Instead of the dress shirt and sports jacket he wore during the six-week trial, the lawyer who made millions suing big companies on behalf of people injured in crashes showed up in court in a prison jumpsuit the day after he was convicted of two counts of murder.

The Colleton County jury deliberated for less than three hours before finding Murdaugh guilty of the double murder.

Juror Craig Moyer told ABC News that when deliberations began, the jury immediately conducted a poll that returned nine guilty votes. It didn’t take long to convince the other three.

The juror agreed with prosecutors that the key piece of evidence was a video recorded on his son’s phone for a year: a video recorded minutes before the murders at the same pound near where the bodies were to be found.

The voices of the three can be heard in the video, despite Alex Murdaugh insisting for 20 months that he was never near the pound that night. When he took the stand in his own defense, the first thing he did was admit he had lied to investigators about his whereabouts, claiming he was paranoid about the law enforcement because he was addicted to opioids and had pills in his pocket. murders.

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Collins reported from Columbia, South Carolina.