by JENN WOOD
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The fight over evidence in Alex Murdaugh’s upcoming murder retrial has suddenly morphed into a fight over the credibility of his attorneys.
In a sharply worded filing submitted on Tuesday (October 6, 2026), prosecutors accused Murdaugh’s defense team of making “brazen falsehoods” in a motion seeking cellphone extraction files — including an allegation that the state delivered critical digital evidence during the first trial, leaving attorneys no meaningful opportunity to examine it.
According to the state, the files in question had already been provided multiple times prior to trial. To support that position, prosecutors attached emails in which defense attorneys acknowledged receiving an extraction they could no longer locate, along with a receipt signed by attorney Phillip Barber ten days before the delivery date identified in the defense’s latest motion.
The filing (.pdf) raised the temperature ahead of an October 16, 2026 hearing before S.C. circuit court judge Debra McCaslin, the presiding judge in this case. It comes as the two sides clash over cellphone data, forensic records and a separate state grand jury investigation into the alleged handling of the missing murder weapons.
Murdaugh was convicted of the murders of his wife, 52-year-old Maggie Murdaugh, and younger son, 22-year-old Paul Murdaugh, and sentenced to life in prison following a six-week trial in Walterboro, S.C. in early 2023. Those convictions were reversed, however, after the S.C. supreme court found numerous issues with the conduct of the trial – including allegations of jury tampering and potential jury rigging. Murdaugh is scheduled to be tried a second time in Sumter, S.C. beginning on April 5, 2027.
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THE CELLPHONE FIGHT
As FITSNews reported last month, Murdaugh’s attorneys sought the extraction archives and associated files underlying the state’s cellphone reports. They argued those materials were necessary for an independent examination of the digital evidence used to construct the murder timeline.
The defense drew a distinction between a report produced by forensic software and the source data used to generate it. Its motion contended that, for several devices, prosecutors supplied reports without the underlying files needed to test the examiners’ conclusions.
Prosecutors flatly rejected that account.
“The simple answer is that the defense was already provided in 2022 with everything they are demanding now, including all the un-redacted ‘raw’ files,” the response stated.
According to the state, SLED lieutenant Britt Dove provided defense expert Chip Johnson the available underlying data from multiple devices on October 25, 2022. Prosecutors said they subsequently arranged replacement copies after the defense experienced problems accessing or locating the material.
The response also pointed to a December 22, 2022 delivery that prosecutors said included the complete, unredacted logical extraction of Alex Murdaugh’s phone performed shortly after the murders.
The exhibits included discovery memoranda, receipts, correspondence and screenshots of extraction files. The state said those records established that the defense received everything SLED possessed.
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RELATED | Murdaugh Defense Demands Raw Cellphone Data
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TEN DAYS THAT MATTER
The most pointed confrontation concerned the defense’s assertion that prosecutors delivered an approximately 81-gigabyte extraction of Alex Murdaugh’s phone on January 30, 2023, during the first trial and the day before Dove began testifying.
According to the defense motion quoted in the state’s response, that timing prevented a meaningful forensic review.
Prosecutors said the delivery occurred January 20, 2023 – three days before jury selection began in the case — and that it was another copy of an extraction already supplied.
A receipt attached as Exhibit J bore Barber’s signature and the handwritten date January 20, 2023. It identified Alex Murdaugh’s September 5, 2021 iPhone file-system extraction and an extraction of a phone Curtis “Eddie” Smith provided to law enforcement the previous day.
An accompanying email from Dove confirmed the signed receipt was returned January 20.
The attached emails also documented acknowledgments from Murdaugh’s attorneys.
On January 19, 2023, Jim Griffin told lead prosecutor Creighton Waters the defense could not locate the September extraction. Griffin said it might have been misplaced or involved an unintended device mix-up, acknowledged the state’s cooperation and took responsibility for the timing of the request.
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“The timing of our request, coming just days before trial, is of our making, not yours,” Griffin wrote.
The following day, Dick Harpootlian expressly acknowledged that the state had previously delivered a copy of Alex’s GrayKey extraction to defense attorney Maggie Fox, but that they were unable to locate it.
The state argued those contemporaneous records contradicted the latest motion’s account.
Prosecutors also contended the trial record contained no objection about the supposed January 30 delivery and cited testimony from defense cellphone expert Micah Sturgis that his review relied on data supplied by the state.
The receipt and emails supported the state’s account of Alex’s extraction and the January delivery date. Screenshots in Exhibit C also listed underlying extraction archives and associated files for Maggie’s and Paul’s phones, challenging the defense’s assertion that it received only forensic reports.
The exhibits did not, however, conclusively account for every requested category of material for every device, including extraction logs and records of additional extraction attempts. Nor did the screenshots alone establish that each file was successfully delivered and accessible.
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A SEPARATE DISCLOSURE BATTLE
The cellphone response arrived alongside a consequential dispute over an investigation into the alleged removal or concealment of the murder weapons.
FITSNews first reported on September 25, 2026 that a state grand jury was examining an alleged crime scene cover-up – including the alleged disposal of bloody clothes and the shotgun and rifle used in the killings.
Neither weapon used to murder Maggie and Paul Murdaugh has been recovered.
As this outlet subsequently reported, the defense filed a separate motion seeking witness statements, investigative records and grand jury material connected to that inquiry.
The defense also asked prosecutors to clarify whether they intended to argue that anyone else participated in the killings or helped transport, conceal or dispose of weapons and clothing afterward.
That dispute included a subpoena directing Yemassee police chief Greg Alexander to appear before the state grand jury in September. According to the defense motion, his anticipated appearance was canceled after attorney Joe McCulloch notified Waters that he represented Alexander.
The subpoena documented that Alexander was summoned. It did not explain why his appearance was canceled or prove the defense’s allegation that prosecutors were using the grand jury to avoid ordinary discovery.
In our latest reporting on Alexander’s movements, we noted that McCaslin set a deadline of this Thursday (October 8, 2026) for the state’s response to the grand jury motion and scheduled a hearing on the matter for October 16, 2026.
Tuesday’s cellphone filing addressed a different motion. It did not resolve the defense’s demands for material from the alleged cover-up investigation.
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RELATED |. EVIDENCE SOUGHT From Alleged Crime Scene Coverup
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AN OFFER — AND AN ACCUSATION
Despite the hostile language, the state said it was willing to supply the cellphone files again.
Prosecutors asked the defense to provide a suitably sized hard drive — recommending two terabytes or larger — so another transfer could be arranged through SLED. They also identified the folder where another requested item should already be located.
The response nevertheless asked McCaslin to deny the defense motion, arguing that prosecutors fulfilled their obligations and that the defense had misrepresented the discovery history.
The defense’s recent filings put the state’s handling and disclosure of evidence under scrutiny. Tuesday’s response put defense counsel’s own recordkeeping and representations to the court under scrutiny as well.
Next week’s hearing will move that fight from competing filings into McCaslin’s courtroom — where accusations of withheld evidence and false statements must be measured against the record. With a second murder trial approaching, the stakes extend beyond either side’s credibility to whether the defense has the material it needs to test the state’s case.
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THE MOTION…
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …
As a private investigator turned journalist, Jenn Wood brings a unique skill set to FITSNews as its research director. Known for her meticulous sourcing and victim-centered approach, she helps shape the newsroom’s most complex investigative stories while producing the FITSFiles and Cheer Incorporated podcasts. Jenn lives in South Carolina with her family, where her work continues to spotlight truth, accountability, and justice.
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SOUND OFF…
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3 comments
Pooty Poot and Jimbo been lyin their asses off!
Who is Timothy Gillespie?
I shall, God willing, keep at it because, though never seeking it, I earned a right AND A DUTY to lecture the system, and because the system is so self-righteous and self-congratulatory it is blind and deaf at all levels, I have to explain why that “unethical as hell” was a “lose-lose-lose” for society; and why now the majority of those who “tolerate” Alex Murdaugh’s retrial do so only in the smug assurance that he will age and die in prison anyway even if he is acquitted of the murders, and even if he were shown ACTUALLY INNOCENT of the murders.
It is lose-lose-lose for society when prosecutors decide, and judges accept and encourage, plea deals OUT OF SHEER PHYSICAL AND INTELLECTUAL LAZINESS.
Assuming Valerie Bauerlein told the story accurately (which would be an exception to her inaccuracies-filled book), all parties lost.
If Harpootlian’s client has NOT swerved to hit the victim, that client went/goes through life with an involuntary manslaughter conviction of which he is innocent and which has long-term consequences even if he did not serve time for it after the plea. That client probably lost all incentives to avoid drinking and avoid bar fights or bars altogether.
If Harpootian’s client HAD intentionally swerved to run over the victim, Society has let a murderer free because the prosecutor’s law firm on the side represented the victim’s family and had much to gain from a civil lawsuit against that murderer set free on a plea to a MUCH lesser offense.
But how could we have known which is it, you ask.
Aren’t trials supposed to be searches FOR THE TRUTH, I answer.
And here is the problem, the system is NOT built to search for the truth but to achieve what it perceives as easy “win-win-win” results.
Prosecutors, and defense lawyers the majority of whom are indeed former prosecutors, never develop the skills OR THE DESIRE to reach the ACTUAL TRUTH for its own sake BECAUSE ultimately that is the most valuable to society.
Prosecutors instead develop “skills” in finding out the narrative a jury and the public will accept, or to which a criminal defendant will plea and a judge will wink, whether that narrative were the truth or the opposite of it.
And those “skills” are manifest here: instead of true skills at ballistics matching, we are suddenly given a narrative as stupid as the Prosecution’s motive theory in the first trial, that someone magically knew the specs of the murder weapons the night of the murders and was allowed to see Police Chief Alexander stash them in an evidence locker, along with bloody clothes to boot, and having supplied Alex with a fresh change of clothes (we are not told where Chief Alexander would have gotten Alex’s size) to boot.
Mind you, if Alex were the killer, all he had to do for “a fresh change of clothes” is go to his own closet which is less than a mile from the kennels instead of going 50 miles away to Yemacee for that “fresh change of clothes.” But nothing is too stupid or too far-fetched for the committed Alex haters to accept.
If Creighton Waters wants to perpetuate such system, he should worry about what that system might someday do to his yet unborn grandson as it did to Buster-the-Elder’s grandson years later.
I know what the system did to me and why no one in that system stood up for me or even for their own self-respect.
In that “win-win-win” story, even Buster-the-Elder’s law firm lost. Sure, they won an easy $300K for a few hours work in the shade; but they lost the sense of honest earnings. Alex’s skimming of the top was only a manifestation of his “education” that easy money is proof of intellectual superiority, not moral inferiority.
If lawyers really wanted the good of society, they would be working against drunk driving and against drinking in the first place.
Instead they marinate each other (and marinate judges) in drinks in social functions and profit from drunk driving at all levels: the criminal defense lawyers get handsome fees for DUI defenses and civil plaintiffs’ lawyers get handsome contingency fees from victims’ law suits.
And the rest of society keeps getting drunk and ever more stupid.