Why didn’t South Carolina prosecutors seek the death penalty for convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh?

Alex Murdaugh avoided the death penalty because prosecutors relied on circumstantial evidence, his defense team claimed today.

Dick Harpootlian suggested prosecutors knew they would not have secured a conviction if they had pushed to execute the disgraced legal scion.

The attorney, who is also a Democratic State Senator, said it would have also allowed the defense to individually question jurors which would have hindered the prosecution.

Judge Clifton Newman earlier told Murdaugh ‘many have received a death penalty’ for lesser crimes as he handed him two consecutive life sentences for the murders of his wife Maggie, 52, and son Paul, 22, at the family’s hunting estate on June 7, 2021.

The 54-year-old lured the pair to the property in Moselle where he blasted his son’s brains out with a shotgun before turning an assault rifle on his wife of 27 years, shooting her five times.

Harpootlian and his colleague Jim Griffin afterwards held a feisty press conference outside the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina, where they vowed to fight the murder conviction

Alex Murdaugh is led through the courtroom for his sentencing at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, S.C., on Friday

Buster, Paul, Maggie and Alex Murdaugh at a family event just a month before the murders

Harpootlian and his colleague Jim Griffin afterwards held a feisty press conference outside the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, South Carolina, where they vowed to fight the murder conviction. 

Asked why he thought that prosecutors did not seek the death penalty, Harpootlian said: ‘I’m someone that has prosecuted and defended a bunch of death penalty cases and clearly you never do it in a circumstantial case because 99 times out of 100 the jury is not going to sentence someone to death without a “I saw him do it”, he confessed or great forensic evidence at the minimum.

‘They had none of that.

‘Secondly, in a death penalty case it gives us the ability to individually voir dire (question) jurors which would have been very helpful here and the prosecution obviously did not want that.’

Harpootlian added: ‘If I’d been prosecuting this case I probably wouldn’t have brought it based on [the evidence].’ 

In death penalty cases defense attorneys can exclude jurors who are so pro-execution they could not judge guilt fairly in a capital case.

On the other hand, the prosecution can remove jurors who would not be able to vote for the death penalty, whether for ethical or other reasons.

In December, South Carolina’s Attorney General said that ‘after carefully reviewing this case and all the surrounding facts, we have decided to seek life without parole.’

To pursue the death penalty, the State would have needed to prove an ‘aggravating circumstance,’ included but not limited to, killing two people ‘by one act or pursuant to one scheme or course of conduct.’

The judge said Friday the Murdaugh double murder case qualified for the death penalty –  but said he didn’t ‘question at all’ the decision of the state not to proceed.

He added: ‘But as I sit here in this courtroom and look around (at) the many portraits of judges and other court officials and reflect on the fact that over the past century your family, including you, have been prosecuting people here in this courtroom and many have received a death penalty probably for lesser conduct.’ 

Nobody has been executed in the state since 2011. 

Despite the unanimous verdict reached in less than three hours, Harpootlian insisted Murdaugh is innocent and said that they had no regrets about putting him on the stand.

The disbarred attorney had ‘no choice’ but to testify because he had been ‘made out to be a monster who stole from children, crippled people’ and others, he said.

Judge Clifton Newman gave a searing assessment of Murdaugh’s ‘duplicitous’; character 

Alex Murdaugh and his defense attorney Dick Harpootlian listen to Judge Clifton Newman during his sentencing at the Colleton County Courthouse in Walterboro, S.C., on Friday

Alex Murdaugh stand with his defense attorneys Jim Griffin (left) and Dick Harpootlian while he was sentenced to life in prison after conviction in double murder trial

Defense attorney Dick Harpootlian and prosecutor Creighton Waters shake hands after the Alex Murdaugh sentencing at the Colleton County courthouse

Defense attorney Dick Harpootlian addresses Judge Clifton Newman during the Alex Murdaugh sentencing at the Colleton County courthouse

‘Did he pull it off? He apparently didn’t,’ he said. 

Askes if he believed his client was innocent, Harpootlian emphatically shouted back: ‘Yes!’

He and Griffin confirmed they would be handling Murdaugh’s appeal and would file a motion arguing for a mistrial within ten days.

Griffin said their chief complaint was the admission of all the evidence of Murdaugh’s financial crimes which the State claimed went to his motive but which the defense argued was ‘illogical and ludicrous.’

The defense had battled to keep the evidence out in a lengthy legal battle lasting several days held without the jury present in court.

However, Judge Clifton Newman ultimately found that it was important for them to understand the full context of the double life he was leading, lying to his family, friends, colleagues and clients.

On Friday, the judge called Murdaugh a ‘monster’ as he sentenced him to back to back life sentences for the murders of Maggie and Paul.

Newman criticized what he described as Murdaugh’s ‘duplicitous conduct’ throughout the trial, and said his actions were especially troubling given that the Murdaugh family had ‘controlled justice in this community for over a century.’

The judge also referenced Murdaugh’s addiction to opioids, which his defense attorneys sought to use as an excuse for his behavior, including his lying to investigators about his whereabouts on the night of the killings.

Alex Murdaugh is led out of the courthouse to a waiting prison van to begin his life sentence

Murdaugh leaves the courthouse in a Colleton County Jail jumpsuit on Friday 

Buster Murdaugh leaves court with his Aunt Lynne and other members of the family. They were flanked by sheriff’s deputies 

Murdaugh leaves Colleton County Court in a corrections van 

‘I know you have to see Paul and Maggie during the nighttime when you attempt to go to sleep,’ Newman said. ‘It might not have been you (who killed them). It might have been the monster you become.’

Murdaugh, dressed in prison garb, professed his innocence again on Friday.

‘I’m innocent. I would never hurt my wife Maggie and I would never hurt my son, Paw Paw,’ he said, using a nickname for Paul, minutes before the judge delivered his sentence and he was escorted from the courtroom in handcuffs.

Throughout the trial, prosecutors portrayed Murdaugh as a serial liar and argued that only he had the means and the opportunity to commit the murders. Prosecutors said he fatally shot his wife and son to distract from an array of financial misdeeds, including the theft of millions of dollars from his law partners and clients — money used to feed a years-long addiction to opioids and support an expensive lifestyle.

For their part, Murdaugh’s lawyers tried to paint their client as a loving family man who, while facing financial difficulties and suffering from a drug addiction that led him to lie and steal, would never harm his wife and child.

They floated alternative theories, with Murdaugh testifying last week that he believed someone angry over a deadly 2019 boating accident involving Paul likely sought revenge on his son.

Murdaugh plans to appeal the verdict all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, his lawyers said on Friday, arguing that the judge’s decision to allow testimony about all Murdaugh’s financial misdeeds unfairly undermined his credibility with the jury.

‘They would never, ever, ever acquit him after that,’ Dick Harpootlian told a news conference.

Prosecutor Creighton Waters enters court on Friday morning 

Prosecutor John Meadors (right) with Reverend Raymond Johnson leaving the courtroom Friday

Alex Murdaugh with wife Maggie and their sons Buster (left) and Paul (right) 

Among the prosecution’s strongest evidence was Murdaugh’s admission that he had lied about his alibi, telling investigators he wasn’t at the dog kennels where the murders took place on the family estate. Murdaugh changed his account after the jury listened to audio evidence placing him at the crime scene minutes before the murders occurred.

The judge spoke about what may have been running through Murdaugh’s mind on the night of the killings, as he confronted a ‘looming storm’ that included his father on his death bed and Paul facing charges in the death of 19-year-old girl killed in the 2019 boat crash. 

Murdaugh was facing a $10 million wrongful death lawsuit stemming from that accident, with a critical hearing scheduled for just days after the killings.

‘There had to be quite a bit going through your mind,’ Newman said, and yet he noted that Murdaugh had testified to that day being like any other, that he had been enjoying life with his wife and son.

‘Not credible, not believable,’ the judge said.