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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 its methodology but presents 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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