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by WILL FOLKS
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Attorneys for accused killer Alex Murdaugh laid out their arguments for conducting independent scientific testing of potentially exculpatory DNA evidence – arguing South Carolina investigators have not acted “in good faith” regarding the handling of other biological evidence in his internationally watched case.
Specifically, Murdaugh attorneys Dick Harpootlian, Jim Griffin, Phillip Barber, Maggie Fox and Andrew Hand filed a motion on Thursday (June 30, 2026) asking the judge handling their client’s upcoming retrial to order an independent laboratory review of DNA evidence found under the fingernails of the late Maggie Murdaugh.
According to the defense attorneys, state investigators have concluded the DNA “belongs to an unknown, unrelated male.”
Maggie Murdaugh and her son, 22-year-old Paul Murdaugh, were brutally murdered at the family’s Colleton County hunting property on the evening of June 7, 2021. Alex Murdaugh was convicted of this double homicide in March of 2023 – and subsequently sentenced to life in prison – but those convictions were overturned earlier this year by the S.C. supreme court.
A new trial has been set for April 2027 by S.C. circuit court judge Debra McCaslin.
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Murdaugh’s lawyers have been working aggressively ahead of that second trial to rebut statements made by prosecutors as to the “overwhelming evidence” of their client’s guilt.
In a motion filed last month seeking the independent laboratory review, they revisited what they contend was one of many key investigatory failures by the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division (SLED), the agency which investigated the murders and various ancillary crimes tied to Murdaugh and his associates.
“DNA evidence was collected from underneath Maggie Murdaugh’s left-hand fingernails at the scene,” Murdaugh’s attorneys alleged. “SLED determined this DNA was from an unknown and unrelated male. No further analysis was attempted. This evidence, however, is crucial to the defense.”
References to this evidence were made by attorney Barber during a recent interview with our research director, Jenn Wood.
Now, Murdaugh’s attorneys want Othram – a national forensic laboratory – to test the DNA before SLED can potentially “degrade” it via its own analyses, tests which defense lawyers argue are not only inferior in their methodology but present a “real and substantial risk” that the DNA samples in question “will be degraded or exhausted.”
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Murdaugh’s attorneys insist SLED is only capable of conducting short tandem repeat (or “STR”) testing, which can only exclude known suspects and “performs poorly on degraded, low-quality or mixed samples.” Othram, on the other hand, uses single nucleotide polymorphism (or “SNP”) testing – which can “extract usable information from degraded or trace amounts of DNA that STR analysis cannot” while also comparing DNA profiles against “large public and consumer genealogy databases.”
“The state has articulated no scientific justification for its preferred testing sequence,” Murdaugh’s attorneys wrote, adding that its sequence of testing “carries a genuine risk of consuming evidence that could be material to the defense.”
In fact, defense attorneys took it a step further by claiming “the only apparent effect of allowing SLED to proceed is to consume irreplaceable sample material before Othram – a laboratory capable of the SNP-based genetic genealogy analysis that SLED does not perform – has the opportunity to test it.”
In raising these issues, Murdaugh’s lawyers made no secret of their contempt for SLED’s prior investigatory failures.
“SLED’s conduct regarding other biological evidence in this case gives further cause to doubt that it acts in good faith,” they wrote, singling out the agency’s failed attempt to “establish that high-velocity blood spatter, which could have only been produced by being in proximity to a victim at the moment of the shooting, created small pinprick stains on the T-Shirt (Murdaugh) was wearing when law enforcement arrived at the murder scene.”
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In April 2022, FITSNews first reported sources familiar with the investigation believed high-velocity impact spatter on Murdaugh’s clothing directly tied him to the killings – evidence which seemed devastating at the time.
“The presence of this forensic evidence on his clothing ‘could have only come from one thing,’” sources told this outlet.
While that evidence convicted Murdaugh in the court of public opinion – and was instrumental in securing the murder indictments against him – by late 2022 the foundation supporting the blood spatter narrative had begun to fall apart.
“When SLED conducted HemaTrace testing on the stained areas of the T-Shirt, it definitively tested negative for the presence of any human blood,” Murdaugh’s attorneys argued in their latest motion. “SLED’s head of forensic administration, captain Emily Reinhart, responded to this exculpatory test result by directing SLED not to conduct any more HemaTrace testing on other items… and by hiding the exculpatory results SLED had already generated.”
Murdaugh’s attorneys further noted that SLED never provided the exculpatory reports to the Oklahoma-based expert it retained “to opine that the stains were blood spatter from Maggie Murdaugh” – and that the shirt Murdaugh wore is no longer available for further testing “because SLED destroyed it through the application of Leuco Crystal Violet,” or LCV, a commonly used chemical compound used to help identify bloodstains.
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“Having destroyed the shirt (Murdaugh) was wearing when he discovered his murdered family, and having been caught suppressing exculpatory forensic test results regarding that shirt, the state pivoted at trial to argue that (Murdaugh) wore a different shirt and put on the T-shirt after the murders,” they wrote.
Murdaugh’s lawyers clearly do not want the same alleged suppression of exculpatory evidence to take place again – particularly not with a sanctions motion related to the previous incident still outstanding from the first trial.
This reporter contacted SLED and the office of S.C. attorney general Alan Wilson – whose statewide grand jury division oversaw the initial Murdaugh prosecution (and is overseeing the Murdaugh retrial prosecution) – for comment. SLED deferred comment Wilson’s office, which did not immediately provide a response.
Murdaugh, 57, is the scion of one of the Palmetto State’s most influential political and legal dynasties – a family which ruled the S.C. fourteenth judicial circuit like a fiefdom for more than a century prior to its unraveling. An assistant solicitor in the circuit, his father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all elected solicitors. Murdaugh was also a powerful plaintiffs’ attorney at the Peters Murdaugh Parker Eltzroth and Detrick (PMPED) law firm in Hampton, S.C., which has since rebranded in the aftermath of his downfall.
While Murdaugh’s murder convictions were reversed and remanded by the supreme court, he continues to serve lengthy concurrent prison sentences after pleading guilty to dozens of financial crimes at both the state and federal level.
The next scheduled court hearing in the Murdaugh matter will be held before judge McCaslin at the Lexington County, S.C. court house at 9:00 a.m. EDT on Friday, August 14, 2026.
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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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1 comment
Whether Richard Alexander Murdaugh’s (“RAM”) defense team likes it or not, God willing and FITS permitting, I’ll keep repeating what I’ve been writing and saying since the beginning of RAM’s now-vacated first trial: RAM’s would not even have been falsely indicted if South Carolina’s (“SC”) criminal “justice” system had not been hi-jacked by lawyers on one side or the other of civil and/or family court litigation for the hi-jacking lawyer/party to gain unfair advantage in the civil and/or family court litigation, all in blatant, even boastful, violation of the canon of “ethics” for lawyers.
RAM’s defense team is guilty of acquiescence to, even participation in, that hi-jacking when they were prosecutors.
And every jurist in SC, state or federal, active or retired, is guilty of glorifying that hi-jacking when they acquiesced to, even participated in, the continuing punishment of Dr. Marie Faltas for having defended herself, thank God and WITHOUT A LAWYER successfully in a 22-26 February 2010 jury trial presided over by none other than Judge Clifton Newman, who had complimented Dr. Faltas ON THE TRANSCRIBED RECORD as “most pleasant and gracious” and “not [pressing points] frivolously at all.”
It was obvious to all that Dr. Faltas was the victim, NOT PERPETRATOR, of relentless harassment by her landlord who wanted to usurp Dr. Faltas’ newly-purchased adjacent vacant lot of land. It was obvious to all that said landlord bribed his/her other tenants with free rent and lease-restrictions/violations-waivers to testify falsely against Dr. Faltas.
Yet, to this day, almost 17 years after Dr. Faltas’ now-proven-false 2 December 2009 arrest, Dr. Faltas is treated as if she were the villain and subjected to humiliating and physically-torturous treatment in SC’s courts to the point of putting her life at risk.
For one example, all pro se litigants, including convicted serial rapists and murderers, may represent themselves pro se as appellants and/or respondents and file electronically before SC’s appellate courts. ALL except Dr. Faltas. All may use phone and/or email to inquire about their cases. ALL except Dr. Faltas. There even is a court exhibit authenticated by now-retired-but-ever-popping-up-for-paid-gigs Daniel E. Shearouse instructing SC’s appellate court employees to read a talismanic statement to Dr. Faltas then hang up on her whenever she calls to inquire about a case of hers.
Curiously, those SC jurists and court employees expect Dr. Faltas to respect them when they do not respect themselves or respect their oaths of office to treat all litigants civilly AND without discrimination.
Linking back to RAM’s request for DNA testing and SLED’s effort to destroy the specimen (under guise of re-testing it by STR) before it gets tested by single nucleotide polymorphism (“SNP”), a plausible explanation emerges: SLED and Creighton Waters know or suspect SNP will reveal one of Paul and Maggie’s real shooters to have been a party to civil litigation involving RAM. Those real shooters needed, not only to eliminate Paul and Maggie as witnesses, but to pin the shootings on RAM to cripple any negotiating position he might have had in the civil litigation(s).
And another curiosity, which proves how RAM’s defense team played into Creighton Waters’ hands, emerges from the attachment to that most recent motion: there WAS a “blue tarp” which was NEVER tested for gun smoke residue (“GSR”).
What was GSR tested instead was a blue JACKET never owned or worn by RAM but likely to have been hunted-in by ANOTHER male member of his family.
That is what I call “Oh! The sky is blue; therefore, the defendant must be guilty” prosecution bluster used against Dr. Faltas and against RAM.
In Dr. Faltas’ trial, Hatchet-for-Hire Heather (“Weiss”) wanted the jury to believe that every time Dr. Faltas looked out of her own window, she did so to “survey” her then-unemployed and noise-making neighbor Teresa Felicia Ingram-Jackson.
But of course, the great Dr. Faltas did not play into Weiss’ hands and stayed on message: this is police and prosecutorial corruption insulting the jury’s intelligence by portraying every innocent and normal act/activity as criminal/criminally-motivated.
Creighton Waters must have been laughing in his sleeve as RAM’s defense called RAM’s brother-in-law to testify that said relative never saw RAM wearing that blue jacket (which proves nothing, really) INSTEAD of having simply shown Mushelle Smith the “blue tarp” (State’s 174) alongside the blue jacket (State’s 173) and asked her which one she claims she saw RAM bring into Almeda then challenging SLED for not having GSR-tested State’s 174.
Oh! The sky is blue and Dr. Faltas looked out of her own window; therefore, she was harassing Teresa Ingram!
Oh! Some blue jacket has GSR and Mushelle Smith saw RAM with a blue tarp at Almeda; therefore he shot Paul and Maggie.
RAM’s defense team had, and still have, no moral authority to condemn those defense tactics because, as former prosecutors themselves, they could have used such tactics.
Most charitably to RAM’s defense team, they still have no moral authority to condemn RAM’s malicious prosecution because, to this day, they know about Weiss’ malicious prosecution of Dr. Faltas but say nothing against it because they want Weiss’ good will in some possible plea deal for some possible future client.
That is why INNOCENT criminal defendants have a better acquittal rate when pro se than when represented.
Why? Perhaps because the pro se advocate has ONLY ONE client, past, present, and/or future: herself. She does not need to soft-chew her defenses to stay in the prosecutor’s good graces for the benefit of future clients.
And that is why the system, built to maximize lawyer employment and profits, views Dr. Faltas as the worst villain of all: she refuses to spend money she does not have to hire a lawyer she cannot trust, all for that lawyer to get for Dr. Faltas a result she does not want: pleading guilty to what she did not do.
And that is why Dr. Faltas stopped signing her pro se pleadings with the empty rote “respectfully.” She cannot respect a system which does not respect itself.
What she does have for the participants in that system is hope that they would rise above the facile advantages of falsity to the moral majesty of repentance and redemption.