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The judge who oversaw the Alex Murdaugh double murder trial has voluntarily removed himself from further proceedings in the case as the defense bids for a second trial based on claims of jury tampering.
Judge Clifton Newman “requested that a new judge be assigned to handle the post-trial motions involving the murder charges” in the disgraced Lowcountry lawyer’s case, the South Carolina Supreme Court said in a terse order released Thursday afternoon.
The recusal comes as a win against broader losses for the convicted killer in his lawsuit against Newman. The effort was intended to preclude the soon-to-be-retired jurist from overseeing any forthcoming Murdaugh-related cases or controversies.
With the ruling, the defense appears to have achieved its primary objective — getting the judge in charge of the marathon murder trial not to sit in judgment should Murdaugh win a second trial.
Newman’s decision to take himself out of the running rendered the request from the defense moot, the state supreme court noted.
In September, in a bombshell press conference and court filings, attorneys Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin highlighted several alleged instances of jury tampering by a court official during Murdaugh’s trial. In that proceeding, he was ultimately convicted of killing his wife, Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh, 52, with an AR-style rifle and their youngest son, Paul Murdaugh, 22, with a shotgun in the dog kennels at the family’s expansive hunting lodge known as Moselle.
But the defense claims that something like a fix was in by way of Colleton County Clerk of Court Rebecca “Becky” Hill. The motion for a new trial alleges Hill, an elected official, “instructed jurors not to be ‘misled’ by evidence presented in Mr. Murdaugh’s defense” and “told jurors not to be ‘fooled by’ Mr. Murdaugh’s testimony in his own defense.”
Harpootlian and Griffin claim the clerk worked to remove a seemingly pro-defense juror from the case entirely by elaborately fabricating evidence of juror misconduct.
That juror’s removal was a final touch of drama in the proceedings, and there were predictions it would likely come up on appeal.
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On March 2, after a trial taking up the better part of six weeks, Murdaugh’s peers found him guilty on all counts against him in the Colleton County Courthouse, where he long practiced law.
Judge Clifton Newman sentences Alex Murdaugh to life in prison at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro on Friday, March 3, 2023, after he was found guilty on all four counts. (Andrew J. Whitaker/The Post and Courier/Pool)
South Carolina case law leans heavily toward the convicted criminal defendant in such instances. And if the allegations are substantiated and found true, the once-powerful trial lawyer will likely be entitled to a new trial. A major procedural hurdle was cleared in October.
While Thursday’s ruling is presumably welcome to the defense as well, there are no allegations that Newman did anything untoward during the murder trial — the longest in state history. Still, the prospect of a second “trial of the century” would be an unkempt embarrassment for state law enforcement, Newman, and the citizens of Colleton County — where Hill is represented by defense attorneys.
Thursday’s ruling was not a clean break for the most famous inmate in South Carolina.
Murdaugh also lost two motions before the Palmetto State’s highest court. His attorneys had requested a stay of an upcoming trial on financial and narcotics charges that is slated to begin on Nov. 27.
That motion was denied.
Murdaugh’s team also asked for Newman to be prohibited from presiding over any future trials. That motion was denied, too.
Law&Crime reached out to a representative for Murdaugh’s attorneys, but no response was immediately forthcoming.
