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by WILL FOLKS
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South Carolina’s top prosecutor has made it abundantly clear he intends to retry disgraced attorney and confessed fraudster Alex Murdaugh for the murders of his wife and younger son after the state’s supreme court emphatically reversed Murdaugh’s convictions for those crimes earlier this week.
While the court’s unanimous decision elevated the degree of difficulty in retrying Murdaugh – limiting the extent to which prosecutors can rely on the financial crimes that helped convict him the first time – attorney general Alan Wilson isn’t just doubling down, he’s anteing up.
In a statement provided to NBC’s Craig Melvin, Wilson made it clear his office is putting the death penalty back on the table as it relates to Murdaugh’s second trial.
“In light of the Supreme Court’s decision, we’re back to square one on this case, and that means all our legal options are on the table, including the death penalty,” Wilson said.
Prior to the first Murdaugh trial, FITSNews devoted extensive ink to the question of whether the state would seek the death penalty against Murdaugh (something prosecutors ultimately declined to do).
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Clearly, Wilson’s calculus is changing ahead of the anticipated second trial – which he has insisted would take place sometime this calendar year in the same venue (Colleton County) as the initial proceedings. Wilson, one of the frontrunners for South Carolina’s governor’s mansion, is not seeking a fifth term as attorney general – meaning he will be leaving the office in January 2027.
As we reported last week, though, all of the candidates vying to replace him are on board with retrying Murdaugh – who was originally convicted in March 2023 of murdering his wife, 52-year-old Maggie Murdaugh, and his younger son, 22-year-old Paul Murdaugh, on the evening of June 7, 2021. He was sentenced to consecutive life terms in prison by now-retired S.C. circuit court judge Clifton Newman.
This week, those convictions were tossed by the high court due to documented jury tampering by former Colleton County clerk of court Rebecca “Becky” Hill. The justices also cited issues with Newman admitting too much information tied to Murdaugh’s financial crimes – which they concluded created a “considerable danger of unfair prejudice.”
With the prosecution now duly warned to limit this evidence during a second trial, the state’s path to securing convictions a second time would appear to have grown narrower.
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— FITSNews (@fitsnews) May 15, 2026
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However, there is a factor that could explain why Wilson is putting the death penalty back on the table – even as the degree of difficulty related to the case has ticked up.
When Wilson initially decided not to seek the death penalty against Murdaugh, South Carolina was in the midst of a thirteen-year moratorium on capital punishment due to a combination of factors – including legal challenges to its various methods of carrying out the sentence. In other words, even if Wilson has secured a capital sentence against Murdaugh in 2023, the state had “no way of carrying out the sentence” at the time.
That moratorium ended on September 20, 2024, when convicted killer Freddie Eugene Owens was put to death for the 1997 murder of 41-year-old Irene Graves of Greenville, S.C. Six additional convicted killers have been put to death by the state since then – including three who were executed by firing squad.
South Carolina provides for the death penalty in murder cases provided a “statutory aggravating circumstance is found beyond a reasonable doubt.” These aggravating circumstances are specifically enumerated in the S.C. Code of Laws (§ 16-3-20) – and are determined on a case-by-case basis in proceedings which are held separately from the murder trial once a guilty plea or verdict has been entered into the record.
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If a defendant in a capital case pleads guilty before trial, the sentencing decision falls to a circuit court judge. If a defendant is found guilty by a jury of his or her peers during a public trial, the decision is made by the same trial jury which heard the original case. Like the determination of a defendant’s guilt, any aggravating factors must be proven “beyond a reasonable doubt” for the death penalty to be imposed.
As we noted in our previous coverage, the ‘Murdaugh Murders’ clearly fall under at least one of the aggravating circumstances – namely the fact that “two or more persons were (allegedly) murdered by the defendant by one act or pursuant to one scheme or course of conduct.”
If Wilson seeks the death penalty against Murdaugh, he would be required to notify the defendant’s attorneys of his decision within thirty days of the start of the retrial – which has yet to be scheduled.
According to the S.C. Code of Laws (§ 16-3-26), “whenever the solicitor seeks the death penalty he shall notify the defense attorney of his intention to seek such penalty at least thirty days prior to the trial of the case.”
This is a developing story… please check back for updates.
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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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6 comments
I bet that made old Alec’s butt pucker.
To the contrary, that would be gift to Alex and his defense team if he does not choose to represent himself.
Either case, the state is, by law, required to appoint him TWO death-penalty-qualified lawyers and to give him a higher cap on defense expense.
I think Alan Wilson is just bluffing.
Having seen some of the dualling post-opinion interviews, I must reiterate my call for the defense team to bow out and let Alex represent himself.
Sadly, as committed to his client as Mr. Harpootlian is, he seems to have learned NOTHING from the now-reversed conviction where he and Jim Griffin ASSUMED the jury will discount Creighton Waters’ crazy theories on the time of death and on motive.
Even more sadly, cases are now won or lost, not in courtrooms but in public opinion; and seeing the majority of comments on the post-reversal stories, Creighton Waters is already winning the retrial.
For those deluded by, and extolling, Creighton Waters, listen carefully to what he he said in his presser after the opinion reversing the conviction but sparing HIM overt criticism.
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 about this, he should have announced a reopened neutral investigation and invited all with new information to contribute.?
Ha, Alan has to be Mr Tough On Crime especially in this election year.
Nevermind that he flew to NYC to support Trump during his trial that resulted in him becoming a convicted felon who also is an adjudicated rapist, has enriched himself with a crypto grift and continues to break laws you nor I would be able to get away with.
Trying again:
So, Creighton Waters now vindictively brandishes the death penalty?
He’s in over his head.
Now that the Catholic Church has declared its opposition to the death penalty to be a core belief, Prancing Creighton Waters (“PCW”) cannot exclude jurors opposed to the death penalty if they are Catholic.
Instead of itching to execute the innocent, Alan Wilson should show some zeal in improving murder investigations.
To expiate for his Frankenstein creation, FITS should do a whole show or a whole story on the scientific failures of the investigation into Paul and Maggie’s shootings.
Here is more about ballistics which is augmented by this (link to video deleted for publishability).
It shows SLED, presumably in the early morning of 8 June 2021, supposedly collecting evidence from around and inside the house at Moselle.
Many mistakes appear in that short clip:
1. The spent bullets collected from around the exterior seven-step stoop are BASICALLY rubbed together by the evidence gatherer thus HOPELESSLY contaminating the subsequent tool-mark microscopic examination and analysis if such analysis were a science to begin with.
2. The evidence gatherers arrived without simple plastic or paper bags in which to put each bullet separately with an identification of the precise location it was found.
3. They then resort to a quick and dirty non-solution of putting a bullet in each finger of a “new glove” again without precise location identification and after the bullets had scarred each other from being basically rubbed together.
4. The exterior door handle is not dusted for fingerprints nor swabbed for DNA.
5. Once inside the house, no effort or attention is paid to any food or drink containers with residue or unconsumed content. That should be basic in any murder investigation even where the victims had been visibly shot: had they been poisoned or attempted to be poisoned before the shootings? Were they under the influence of anything they had consumed before being confronted by their shooter(s)? That may not necessarily have been the case here; but these are basics of any investigation started on a blank slate.
6. They are heard commenting to each other that the autopsies already started. They should have carefully looked for evidence of unconsummated or recently-consummated food and drink to supply to the autopsy performer.
Or course, many more mistakes appear even in that short clip.
Now that the Sixth Amendment right to a fair and impartial jury has been vindicated, it is essential to vindicate the DUE PROCESS right to a scientifically-sound investigation before charges are even brought against anyone.
Of course, many more mistakes appear even in that short clip.
Now that the Sixth Amendment right to a fair and impartial jury has been vindicated, it is essential to vindicate the DUE PROCESS right to a scientifically-sound investigation before charges are even brought against anyone.
FITS, this is all getting out of hand; and you want to consider this solution of mine:
Alex Murdaugh’s ONLY hope of DESERVED exoneration is through a bench re-trial.
There is ONE retired/active SC state circuit judge and ONE active SC state circuit judge with the intellect to cut through ALL the Prosecution’s nonsense and THE COURAGE to find Alex not guilty.
Judging by the insane comments which insist that Becky Hill was bribed by Alex to make the jury find him guilty, Alan Wilson has already won the prejudicial pre-re-trial publicity case, which is really and REALISTICALLY where cases are won or lost in this day and age.
They will NEVER find truly impartial jurors.
They will find PLENTY of jurors who fancy themselves impartial; and there is no magical way to tease self-delusion from reality.
There are SCIENTIFIC ways to do so; but they have not penetrated the law which built a wall of magic around itself and thinks some lawyers/judges can sit in a room and come out with WORDY rules which answer all the world’s questions.
And all lawyers and judges like that wall of magic around themselves, because without it, what do they actually have? Words! Only words that someone else, cloaked with a wall of magic built around themselves, wrote in prior appellate opinions and/or rules of “evidence.”
Don’t let the man Alex suffer one more year! Agree to a bench trial before a judge who would have to take a new, made-for-the-occasion oath to find Alex NOT Guilty if so led by the evidence.
I will not give the names of the two judges who are the exception which proves the rule. They know who they are; and Kittredge knows them, too. If only the sides would agree to a bench re-trial and Kittredge would have the courage and wisdom to select the right judge, this turmoil should be over and avoided.