The Constitutional Principles That Undid Alex Murdaugh’s Convictions

My compliments to you, Jenn Wood, are subsumed in my care to make one correction and several necessary, but succent and useful additions to this excellent article of yours.
The corrections is that NOTHING limits what jurors can say about their verdict or anything else after the verdict or indictment of their own volition OUTSIDE OF JUDICIAL PROCEEDINGS.
The limitations are on their being REQUIRED to testify in court in post-verdict or post-indictment proceedings about their mental processes in reaching their verdict or indictment.
The rest of your article is more precise; but your choice of the word “say” on reference to Rule 606(b) is too broad and may give some a false impression that those jurors who CHOSE to speak to Richard Alexander Murdaugh’s (“RAM”) defense team after Becky Hill’s book came out did something improper.
Now to the additions:
The right to impartiality of a representative jury, when trial by jury is timely and clearly demanded, is guaranteed by the 6th Amendment in criminal cases, AND BY THE SEVENTH IN CIVIL CASES when the value in controversy exceeds $20.
So, meddling with a civil jury is as offensive to the Constitutions of the U.S. and of South Carolina as meddling with a jury hearing a criminal case. No one should have different ideas.
Next, a person may not be imprisoned in his/her rights. Though the right to counsel and to jury trial are constitutionally guaranteed, a person is equally constitutionally protected in choosing to represent him/herself and/or in opting for a bench trial instead of a jury trial.
And in bench trials, civil or criminal, the Constitution guarantees a judge who is not only impartial in fact but also meets the appearance of impartiality.
Nor is the Constitution limited to the 6th and 7th amendments; before them are the 4th and 5th Amendments, the latter crucial in preventing coerced confessions, true or false.
And DUE PROCESS is not merely procedural; it is substantive, too, though there is debate about the origins and scope of substantive due process. To my mind, it is in the Preamble to the Constitution, in the preceding Declaration of Independence, and in the Social Contract principles which motivated the common signatories to both documents.
Back to RAM’s case, I reiterate that due process guarantees him and all criminal defendants a pre-indictment/pre-presentation/pre-probable-cause-application unbiased and thorough investigation ACCORDING TO THE EVOLVING SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE just as the 8th Amendment understanding of “cruel and unusual” punishment evolves with the evolving standards of decency of modern societies.
Finally, the whole purpose of all these constitutional safeguards is to ensure that no one gets convicted of a crime of which (s)he is in fact innocent; and if in fact guilty, not punished in excess of what contemporary decency allows.
I am disturbed by those who accept the retrial only because they are confident RAM will be prosecuted again and convicted again.
No, no, NO! The Constitution is not a museum piece or a silly dysfunctional ritual like the British judges’ and lawyers’ antique wigs.
Belief in the Constitution means open-mindedness to the premise that convictions obtained through constitutional violations may well have been convictions of the innocent.
Belief in the

More insane ideas about “justice” keep popping up.
“Justice,” according to Alan Wilson, for Paul and Maggie Murdaugh is spending “whatever it takes” for a SECOND WRONGFUL conviction of the man who loved them most, while the real shooter(s) roam free and perhaps are plotting to kill Alex Murdaugh himself in prison to end the inquiry.
Not one word from Alan Wilson about re-investigating the matter with an open mind.
We already know, from Becky Hill’s now-withdrawn book, that some spent thousands of dollars to keep a conviction-prone juror on the jury instead of his having to return to work and earn money to pay his baby-mama overdue child support.
Isn’t funneling money to sitting juror a very serious crime?
Why isn’t Alan Wilson investigating that?
Perhaps the source of that money to that juror is also a campaign contributor to Alan Wilson.
Isn’t that the REAL reason Alan Wilson never investigated Hatchet-for-Hire Heather’s (Sarah Heather Savitz Weiss) crimes of fabrication and subornation of perjury in a failed scheme to frame Dr. Marie Faltas for supposed “harassment in the first degree”?
Didn’t Alan Wilson rescue Hatchet-for-Hire Heather from the tumult of her then-colleagues at the Fifth Circuit’s solicitor’s office by hiring her (and later hiring John Meadors, too) after John Meadors lost his campaign for solicitor but Stephen Savitz, Heather’s father had made sizeable contributions to both the John Meadors and Alan Wilson 2010 campaigns?
Doesn’t Alan Wilson continue to promote Hatchet-for-Hire Heather within his office even though her reputation among lawyers is so bad that she withdrew her second candidacy for a judgeship after the secret bar surveys came back heavily negatively against her?
Heck! The woman even had her own son cheat on his Bar Mitzvah exam instead of doing the necessary work to learn Hebrew and become a true-before-God eligible for a Minyan!
And let’s talk about two other people, a wife and a son, each shot in the head by the gun of one man, in his sole presence, in his home, and to his ultimate financial gain.
Two difference, though: (1) that man’s second wife was shot in May 1993 and his first-bort son was shot in April 2016; (2) that man, Larry Wayne Mason, passed his shooting of Ella Faye Kaizer Mason and of Richard Wayne Mason off as suicides, even though the ballistics were against that and even though Richard Wayne Mason was hastily cremated WITHOUT an autopsy on this highly suspicious death.
And one more suspicious detail: Larry Wayne Mason’s second son, Ella’s only son, got reported dead in the middle of civil lawsuits and criminal drug and other charges against him, all without a death certificate for Christopher James Mason appearing anywhere.
Was it a fake death? Who knows other than Larry Wayne Mason, who remains able to blackmail officers and officials alike?
Where is Alan Wilson’s pursuit of Justice for Ella and Richard? Heck! Where is the concern for Christopher James’ children who are either lied to about their father’s fake death or are know the truth but are forced to join, and grow up in, lies?
Where is the justice for Dr. Marie Faltas’ family who got bankrupted financially supporting her through years of her 24/7 necessary and able pro se work to exonerate herself from the Larry-Wayne-Mason-ordered and Hatchet-for-Hire-Heather- executed, but thank God failed, scheme to railroad Dr. Marie Faltas into a false 36-year (yes, thirty-six years) incarceration for that Larry Wayne Mason could overtake Dr. Faltas’ tiny lot of land which Larry coveted just as Mark coveted Moselle?
I want Alan Wilson to answer to his own conscience before trying to answer to the voters.
Some day or another, we all have to answer to God; and if you don’t believe in God, at least believe in History coming back to interrogate you when you are no longer in power.