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by WILL FOLKS
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South Carolina’s supreme court has yet to issue its decisive ruling on convicted killer Alex Murdaugh‘s high-profile appeal of his two murder convictions (and the two life sentences subsequently imposed upon him as a result).
Speculation about the court’s impending decision is running rampant, but as of now there is no definitive timetable for the justices to issue an order in the case…
Murdaugh was convicted three years ago of murdering his wife – 52-year-old Maggie Murdaugh – and younger son, 22-year-old Paul Murdaugh, at the family’s Colleton County hunting property on the evening of June 7, 2021. Those convictions seem likely to be overturned, however, due to documented jury tampering – and alleged jury rigging – at Murdaugh’s internationally watched double homicide trial.
In fact, some are saying the justices have already made up their minds to reverse Murdaugh’s convictions – and remand his case back to South Carolina’s circuit court.
If the supreme court does kick the case back to the circuit court level… what happens then?
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RELATED | MURDAUGH APPEAL RUMORS SWIRL
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Our lead researcher Jenn Wood and I will be discussing that potentiality extensively in our upcoming ‘Week in Review‘ episode, but in the meantime we wanted to dispense with potentialities – and put the prosecutors who would decide what happens next on the spot (and on the record) as to their intentions.
Specifically, we wanted see what attorney general Alan Wilson – whose office oversaw Murdaugh’s initial prosecution – and the four candidates vying to replace him would do in the increasingly likely event these verdicts are overturned.
So… will the anticipated reversal and remand of Murdaugh’s convictions result in a retrial?
Typically, questions like that yield a divergence of opinion… but not in this case.
In this case, the answer is an unambiguous – and unanimous – “yes.”
Alex Murdaugh will be retried for the murders of his wife and son.
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Wilson’s office confirmed it would opt to retry Murdaugh, a key determination considering many of the initial procedural matters tied to such a retrial could happen prior to him leaving office in January 2027.
“This office will always aggressively continue the pursuit of justice at any stage of the court process,” a statement from Wilson’s office noted.
But whichever aspiring politician follows Wilson as the Palmetto State’s top prosecutor, the decision on prosecuting Murdaugh a second time remains the same.
S.C. first circuit solicitor David Pascoe – one of the three GOP candidates for attorney general – told us “of course” he would retry the notorious convicted killer.
“There is substantial evidence of guilt,” Pascoe said, noting he had retried murder cases “several times during my career.”
Pascoe also took a mild jab at Wilson’s office, saying he would re-convict Murdaugh “in two weeks or less.”
Murdaugh’s first trial took six weeks, as lead prosecutor Creighton Waters controversially introduced all manner of evidence tied to Murdaugh’s financial crimes, which the state insisted was central to his motive for murder. While that evidence may have helped secure the convictions, a big part of Murdaugh’s appeal maintains this information was improperly admitted into the trial by presiding judge Clifton Newman.
S.C. eighth circuit solicitor David Stumbo also indicated he would be inclined to retry Murdaugh in the event the case gets kicked back to the lower court.
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“I cannot think of a time in my career when I have had a reversal of a homicide (or any other serious case) that I did not schedule for re-trial when it came back from appeal,” Stumbo told us. “So, even though it would be irresponsible of me as a prosecutor to give a definitive answer to that question on a case where I have not personally reviewed all the facts and evidence in the case, there is certainly a very high likelihood that the case would be re-tried if it is reversed and I am the elected attorney general at that time.”
State senator Stephen Goldfinch was actually the first of the five attorneys to respond to our inquiry, telling us – immediately and decisively – that he would retry Murdaugh if the decision fell to him.
“I would,” he said. “And you can count that answer as true, because I don’t have an actual conflict of interest like some others.”
That’s a reference to Pascoe – a longtime political ally of Murdaugh’s lead defense attorney, former state senator Dick Harpootlian.
Charleston, S.C. attorney Richard Hricik, the Democrat nominee for attorney general, also said he would retry Murdaugh.
“Unequivocally yes,” Hricik told us. “The rule of law is the rule of law. When an attorney occupies a position of trust and confidence in a situation like this – and betrays that trust – I think a retrial is in the public interest because of the nature of the crimes and the elevated profile of the case.”
Be on the lookout for our upcoming ‘Week in Review‘ for additional discussion of this case… which based on these responses certainly appears poised to become the Palmetto State’s ‘Retrial of the Century.’
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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4 comments
I am gratified that FITS now calls it the terminologically correct “two murder convictions” instead of the oxymoronic “double murder convictions” because, as I recently explained, a victim can be murdered only once since the life goes out only once and the taking of a life is the sine qua non element of murder. You can “double shoot” someone but you can’t “double murder” him/her.
Nor, if you made a “360-degree turn” do you change direction at all. You would be facing exactly where you started.
To turn in the extreme opposite direction, you have to make a “180 degree turn.”
Some of my writing is sinking in somewhere, thank God.
So encouraged, I here recap what I previously detailed about the scientific and social impossibility of Richard Alexandre Murdaugh (“RAM”) having been the or a shooter of Maggie or of Paul Murdaugh on 7 June 2021.
1. The content of the victims’ stomachs at autopsy, when compared to the known time and composition of their last, large and relatively fatty, last meal, makes impossible for them to have died only 22 minutes after that last meal unless both of them were afflicted with gastric dumping syndrome, of which there is no history for either victim.
2. Paul’s video of Cash-the-dog’s tail was not sent, not because Paul was shot right after taking it, but because it shows no lesion (or “pone” as Rogan Gibson had termed it to police in his interview) on Cash’s tail. What Paul had suspected to be a lesion was in reality either an optical elusion or a piece of caked mud that fell off with Cash’s furious wagging of its tail and/or Paul’s sleeving that tail through his non-phone-holding hand as seen in the video. In other words, Paul did not send the video because he became absolutely convinced that it was utterly unnecessary. And the phone battery was at 1% going to 0%.
3. The spatter on RAM’s white T-shirt is from the flapping of the chicken which Bubba-the-dog had caught and caused to die. It tested positive for blood but negative for human blood. That proves it was what RAM wore to the kennels whence he went to Almeda. Since it had no human blood, the wearer could not have been the shooter.
4. Nor could Ram have been wearing the long kaki pants seen in Paul’s earlier snap-chat video of the sapling which kept falling. Blanca testified that she found those pants in the shower and laundered them the day after the murders. Blanca would not have laundered those pants if they had been blood soaked. Nor would she had left them on the shower room floor before she left Moselle the morning or early afternoon of 7 June 2021 had those long kaki pants been on the shower room floor from the previous day.
5. If RAM were the real shooter, he would have spent the night in Almeda in his hospitalized father’s empty bed and left the bodies to be discovered by one or more of the Moselle hands the morning of 8 June 2021. Instead, RAM hurried back to Moselle after checking on his agitated Alzheimer-afflicted mother whose agitation was augmented by her husband’s absence.
6. If RAM needed sympathy or a delay in the boat crash case, he would have obtained that a-plenty from the predicted death of his terminal father on 10 June 2021, the day of a non-determinative hearing in the boat crash case.
7. If Ram needed to protect Paul from imprisonment upon conviction in the criminal part of the boat crash case (which conviction was highly unlikely in any event), RAM would have helped Paul escape, not killed him. The deniability of assisting a fugitive is much greater than murder and the penalties are much lighter. And RAM could have gotten as much sympathy, and a continuance of the civil side of the boat crash case, by Paul being found missing rather than dead.
8. If RAM needed to kill an immediate relative for sympathy and delay, why two, not just one? And why by shooting instead of, for example. dissolving opioid pills in Maggie’s or Paul’s drinks and passing it off as an accident?
9. Could the supposed mastermind of so many long-undetected financial fraud schemes, among many shrewd lawyers at that, not have thought of more effective and less drastic and detectable way to gain sympathy and delay?
10. Even more stupid are the explanations that popped up for that supposed blue tarp and of Becky Hill’s conduct, all of which I will not re-analyze here.
But I invite one and all to politely ask me if there is something they do not understand in what I just summarized.
And I invite Will Folks, even if he does not feel guilty about having stoked the media prejudice against RAM, to become an effective agent in RAM’s exoneration. The joy of helping exonerate the innocent is among the greatest an adult human can experience.
I am gratified that FITS now calls it the terminologically correct “two murder convictions” instead of the oxymoronic “double murder convictions” because, as I recently explained, a victim can be murdered only once since the life goes out only once and the taking of a life is the sine qua non element of murder. You can “double shoot” someone but you can’t “double murder” him/her.
Nor, if you made a “360-degree turn” do you change direction at all. You would be facing exactly where you started.
To turn in the extreme opposite direction, you have to make a “180 degree turn.”
Some of my writing is sinking in somewhere, thank God.
So encouraged, I here recap what I previously detailed about the scientific and social impossibility of Richard Alexandre Murdaugh (“RAM”) having been the or a shooter of Maggie or of Paul Murdaugh on 7 June 2021.
1. The content of the victims’ stomachs at autopsy, when compared to the known time and composition of their last, large and relatively fatty, last meal, makes impossible for them to have died only 22 minutes after that last meal unless both of them were afflicted with gastric dumping syndrome, of which there is no history for either victim.
2. Paul’s video of Cash-the-dog’s tail was not sent, not because Paul was shot right after taking it, but because it shows no lesion (or “pone” as Rogan Gibson had termed it to police in his interview) on Cash’s tail. What Paul had suspected to be a lesion was in reality either an optical elusion or a piece of caked mud that fell off with Cash’s furious wagging of its tail and/or Paul’s sleeving that tail through his non-phone-holding hand as seen in the video. In other words, Paul did not send the video because he became absolutely convinced that it was utterly unnecessary. And the phone battery was at 1% going to 0%.
3. The spatter on RAM’s white T-shirt is from the flapping of the chicken which Bubba-the-dog had caught and caused to die. It tested positive for blood but negative for human blood. That proves it was what RAM wore to the kennels whence he went to Almeda. Since it had no human blood, the wearer could not have been the shooter.
4. Nor could Ram have been wearing the long kaki pants seen in Paul’s earlier snap-chat video of the sapling which kept falling. Blanca testified that she found those pants in the shower and laundered them the day after the murders. Blanca would not have laundered those pants if they had been blood soaked. Nor would she had left them on the shower room floor before she left Moselle the morning or early afternoon of 7 June 2021 had those long kaki pants been on the shower room floor from the previous day.
5. If RAM were the real shooter, he would have spent the night in Almeda in his hospitalized father’s empty bed and left the bodies to be discovered by one or more of the Moselle hands the morning of 8 June 2021. Instead, RAM hurried back to Moselle after checking on his agitated Alzheimer-afflicted mother whose agitation was augmented by her husband’s absence.
6. If RAM needed sympathy or a delay in the boat crash case, he would have obtained that a-plenty from the predicted death of his terminal father on 10 June 2021, the day of a non-determinative hearing in the boat crash case.
7. If Ram needed to protect Paul from imprisonment upon conviction in the criminal part of the boat crash case (which conviction was highly unlikely in any event), RAM would have helped Paul escape, not killed him. The deniability of assisting a fugitive is much greater than murder and the penalties are much lighter. And RAM could have gotten as much sympathy, and a continuance of the civil side of the boat crash case, by Paul being found missing rather than dead.
8. If RAM needed to kill an immediate relative for sympathy and delay, why two, not just one? And why by shooting instead of, for example. dissolving opioid pills in Maggie’s or Paul’s drinks and passing it off as an accident?
9. Could the supposed mastermind of so many long-undetected financial fraud schemes, among many shrewd lawyers at that, not have thought of more effective and less drastic and detectable way to gain sympathy and delay?
10. Even more stupid are the explanations that popped up for that supposed blue tarp and of Becky Hill’s conduct, all of which I will not re-analyze here.
But I invite one and all to politely ask me if there is something they do not understand in what I just summarized.
And I invite Will Folks, even if he does not feel guilty about having stoked the media prejudice against RAM, to become an effective agent in RAM’s exoneration. The joy of helping exonerate the innocent is among the greatest an adult human can experience.
You are wonderful! And the whole country needs you.
What the what, FITS?
Why is A very important reply of mine to Alan Wilson’s and Creighton Waters’ press conference an hour ago not appearing?
Here it is again:
? @reenakemp9132 , if you listened carefully to what Creighton Waters said in the press conference few minutes ago, you will understand that Creighton Waters ABANDONED the sacred prosecutorial duty to explore exculpatory evidence with the same zeal as inculpatory evidence.
He did NOT do that.
Indeed, he BRAGGED about doing THE OPPOSITE.
He said in so many words “aggressive” and “concern for double jeopardy.”
TRANSLATION: if you, as a prosecutor, obey your duty to include exculpatory evidence and the criminal defendant gets acquitted, the State cannot appeal because of double jeopardy. But if you as a prosecutor “aggressively” include irrelevant and prejudicial evidence, and it causes a wrongful conviction, the criminal defendant can appeal and if “the system works” he gets a new trial as just happened.
Right? NO, no, no! WRONG, wrong, wrong!
“The system” trusts the prosecutors to err on the side of caution, not on the side of conviction at any price.
Lives get destroyed because of wrongful convictions, even if later reversed.
The public confidence in the legal system gets rightly shaken.
And most significantly, the REAL perpetrator gets to avoid accountability (for five years now and going) or forever.
If Alan Wilson were truly non-political, he should have announced a reopened neutral investigation and invited all with new information to contribute.