Murdaugh Defense Says Male DNA Under Victim’s Nails Was Untested

Attorneys for Alex Murdaugh are asking a South Carolina judge to compel prosecutors to release additional forensic evidence, including unidentified male DNA recovered from beneath Maggie Murdaugh’s fingernails. The defense says the state crime lab located the DNA but never completed testing it.

In a 93-page motion filed Friday, Murdaugh’s lawyers also sought additional ballistics evidence and the raw data from a laser scan of the crime scene in Colleton County, South Carolina.

The defense accused South Carolina prosecutors of delaying the release of evidence in a way that could undermine its preparation for Murdaugh’s upcoming retrial.

“Every week the State withholds this material is a week taken from the preparation of the defense, and if the delay continues the defense may be forced to seek a continuance that Mr. Murdaugh does not want and that the Court has said it will not grant. The State should not be permitted to create, through inaction, the very delay it would then oppose,” the motion states.

Murdaugh’s defense team had previously asked that the DNA collected from beneath Maggie Murdaugh’s fingernails be sent to Othram, Inc. After Othram examined the evidence, the defense argued that more testing was necessary to develop a male DNA profile that the state crime lab had identified but did not fully pursue.

The attorneys also want additional testing of a partial DNA profile obtained from swabs taken from Maggie Murdaugh’s phone.

The defense is further seeking records of every shooting in counties surrounding the crime scene in which .300 Blackout shell casings or projectiles were recovered, as well as details about those incidents. Lawyers also requested the raw data from a 3D laser scan that the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division conducted at the scene. Prosecutors provided a read-only viewer file in 2022, but the defense says it needs the underlying data to recreate the scene.

Murdaugh’s attorneys also accused prosecutors of changing their position on the alleged murder weapon. At his 2023 trial, the state described the .300 Blackout rifle as uncommon and used that argument to point toward the Murdaugh family’s guns. Prosecutors now characterize the cartridge as one of the most popular AR cartridges in the country, according to the motion.

“The State has had continuous and exclusive custody of every item of physical evidence in this case, including the biological material that is the subject of Part III of this motion, for more than five years. It has tested what it wished to test, in the sequence it wished to test it, without notice to the defense and without the defense’s consent. It now proposes that the defense may not do the same,” Murdaugh’s lawyers argued.

Joshua Ritter, a former prosecutor and Fox News contributor, said seeking additional DNA testing could prove risky for Murdaugh’s defense, describing the request as a “big gamble.”

“I think it’s probably better left alone by the defense so that they can make that argument about this unknown male. ‘Who is that? Why didn’t the prosecution test it? Why didn’t they do anything about it?’ Maybe they’re concerned that the prosecution could point the finger right back at them and say, well, you guys didn’t test it either, you had it for as much time as we did,” he said.

Murdaugh was convicted in 2023 of killing his wife, Maggie, and their son, Paul, at the family’s Moselle property in Colleton County. The South Carolina Supreme Court later overturned the convictions after determining that former Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill improperly influenced the jury. Murdaugh’s retrial is scheduled to begin April 5, 2027.

News Media contacted the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division and Attorney General Alan Wilson for comment.